If Google had a modicum of vision they would be looking at possibly "adopting" it
But alas, no. And if they did they would probably force a "login with G+ on it" regardless
The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
141–150 of 436 posts
Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
The stupid part is that profits are really not optimized by the enshittification profit campaigns - there is so much incompetence in isolated C-suites making these decisions.
I've said it before, but why do social media sites try to monetize through methods which provide no tangible benefits? A blue checkmark, some shitty NFT avatars, being able to badge someone's comment or post - I don't care about those things, definitely not enough to pay for them. If Reddit wanted to monetize me, give me something tangible. I'd pay $5/mo for a 'pro' tier or something if it had unlimited third-party a…
I think the question is what are the tangible benefits people would actually pay for?
Social media companies have the incentive to figure out how to make more money from their product. I think the fact that none of them have really proposed any pro-tier that is adopted by a majority of users shows that most people aren't really willing to pay for anything they provide.
Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#143The problem is that the open internet is dying. What used to be blogs and forums now is Reddit. Tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of communities that had their own wiki, blog, forum, ... are now reduced to be a Subreddit. The Internet has become fragile. One service goes down and everybody suffers. If the top 10 services went down most people would think that there is no Internet at all. E-Mail is the last s…
> are now reduced to be a Subreddit. I don't know if anything else was possible, the IT need for communities is about the same and it makes total sense to have those on one place. It solves the infrastructure problem, it solves discoverability problem, it solves the user account management problem and it is all "free". It comes at the cost of fragility, true, but as always convenience is the king.
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Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#144The mainstream web seems to be crumpling under the weight of its enshittification.
Man that word at the end really made me chuckle - thanks for the laugh
Sounds funny, yes, but it's part of Cory Doctorow's essay, which is spot on https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/
Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#145The problem is that the open internet is dying. What used to be blogs and forums now is Reddit. Tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of communities that had their own wiki, blog, forum, ... are now reduced to be a Subreddit. The Internet has become fragile. One service goes down and everybody suffers. If the top 10 services went down most people would think that there is no Internet at all. E-Mail is the last s…
> are now reduced to be a Subreddit. I don't know if anything else was possible, the IT need for communities is about the same and it makes total sense to have those on one place. It solves the infrastructure problem, it solves discoverability problem, it solves the user account management problem and it is all "free". It comes at the cost of fragility, true, but as always convenience is the king.
Maybe the solution isn't decentralization, but a non-profit approach like Wikipedia.
Reddit already functions entirely on volunteer labor anyways, adding venture capital requirements makes much less sense than a just-keep-the-lights-on non-profit model.
Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#146Google + Reddit should form some sort of partnership to monetize results. Maybe instead of Reddit.com , users are redirected to a sort of landing page that incorporates Reddit answers but is not Reddit, and also has google ads on it. the landing page, using AI, incorporates the answers in a more readable format.
Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many years ago, one of the search options on Google, alongside Images, News, etc., was "Discussions." It would explicitly show results from web forums. I defaulted to this when I was looking for, e.g., product reviews -- because it would bypass the endless SEO spam where someone found some highly-rated products on Amazon and published an article "reviewing" them. Unfortunately, Google killed that search type. There a…
Simply adding "forum" onto the search query has worked pretty well for me. Of course, when I am aware of a specific forum which exists for that topic, site:... works well too.
Same, if I am done reading reddit discussions I will just switch to 'forum' and occasionally stumble into some forum threads. Most are dead now though!
Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#148Currently struggling with searching for the usual developer queries, but not getting the answers I need :(
“Something something random package name is suddenly broken Reddit”
The backup is using the same query with “stack overflow”, but that knowledge has become dated.
Around the rise of Slack, and then Discord and Teams, knowledge started becoming transferred between open source devs within their corresponding chat. People would get their answer on a VueJs issue and move on… The end result was that Google never picked that up, and the next dev popped in the chat the next day with the exact same question.
In the last couple years, Reddit has become the place for devs to do q&a as well.
It’s also making it difficult for me to communicate with prospective users online for simple market research and feedback.
Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's getting worse by the minute, too. What used to be a subreddit might now be a Discord server, which is in my opinion even worse, keeping solutions/questions to certain issues within Discord's own walls. You now have to enter a server, search for your specific problem, and, if not found, ask someone and wait for them to respond. If results are on the first page of google it's much more friction-less and convenient…
Sounds a bit like IRC to be honest.
but IRC was never controlled by a unique corporation/business. Was community driven
Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what's happening with Twitter and Reddit is actually a good thing in that it's exposing the failures of centralized networks. The thing is, these failures aren't big enough yet for people to jump ship and I think the main problem is none of the decentralized social networks have provided a solution that's better. Mastodon is theoretically a better version of Twitter, but normal people get lost the moment some…
It is stunning to me that Mastadon still hasn't come up with a simple onboarding solution to sidestep the issue of "instances" I completely agree with you. Mastadon even loses techies like me due to the decision fatigue of having to pick instances before I can even start exploring.
They did. The mobile app by default signs you up on mastodon.social now