Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

techradar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 436 posts

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#201

Post by [deleted] »

willio58 wrote: post #106
hourago wrote: post #75

The 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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#202

Post by shreyshnaccount »

The internet is getting worse. Every comment on here is proof of that. We as tech-people MUST change this, because well, no one else will/cares/wants to.

Let's try to make it easier to make these communities without relying on monopolies.

Long live the open internet.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#203

Post by mintplant »

I've been bumping into this a bunch trying to research different neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., for an upcoming three-month stay. A lot of useful info is locked up in r/washingtondc right now, with much of it missing from Google's cache and the Wayback Machine. I still support the blackouts—I used to mod a default subreddit—but I wasn't expecting this particular effect!

(Tangentially, anyone know how the Mount Vernon Triangle area is these days?)

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#204

Post by edrxty »

toastercat wrote: post #170
chrisrogers wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a bit like IRC to be honest.

I've seen some IRC channels archive their chat as search-able HTML pages that are also indexed by search engines. Wish Discord servers would do something similar.

Discord knows better, this is by design. Their investors would run screaming if they knew what was in those chat logs. The lack of searchability is their biggest defense against being hauled in front of Congress because the public just isn't aware of how much of the platform is extremism.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#205

Post by unshavedyak »

lamontcg wrote: post #192
unshavedyak wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good question. Regardless of Twitter, Kbin and Lemmy (and maybe others?) will be even more important for ensuring they get indexed properly. The organic/real nature of Reddit comments (at least those not astroturfed .. heh) were valuable to search. We (devs) need to make sure Fediverse stuff provides that value. At least in my view. Is there something Mastodon/Kbin/Lemmy might be doing that could cause poor in…

Pretty sure Mastodon doesn't allow indexing because that can be used to brigade users and they're trying very hard to actively avoid creating the dogpiles that twitter almost actively incentivizes.

Oof, seems like that should be a instance setting (with user override), not the whole software. Good to know.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#206

Post by 0_____0 »

vxNsr wrote: post #158
DirkH wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What’s shocking is everyone can wrap their heads around regular country post offices, emails, in general distinct entities interacting, but lose their minds when you tell them about mastodon. Just tell them it’s email for twitter. Just like you can interact with anyone who’s email address you know so too with their mastodon handle. The only real difference is that everyone also publishes all their “emails” for anyone…

As someone who has heard of Mastodon but not really interacted with it, that's a really helpful metaphor!

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#207

Post by pessimizer »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #48
falcolas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's recency bias in search results hurts them too. There are many older resources which are still valid out there, but you won't find them (easily) via Google Search. Instead, you get the SEO spam which doesn't match the search as well, but is newer.

Can you give an example? For many things (software, hardware, buying things,...) older resources might still be valid but dated. For more settled subjects, e.g. encyclopedic, I also have not had Google be worse than Bing.

Google results didn't start to decline to be worse than Bing, Google results declined irrespective of and without reference to Bing. Google results are far worse that Google results once were.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#208

Post by tayo42 »

supernikio2 wrote: post #83
hourago wrote: post #75

The 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…

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…

i keep seeing this sentiment about things moving to discord here, but my experience is i dont see that happening anywhere. i suspect there is some kind of experience bubble you are in. i really never hear about people using discord except for games.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#209

Post by balder1991 »

danudey wrote: post #26
dv_dt wrote: post #11

Earlier 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 it’s the same reason countries don’t simply get better as we expect they should: there’s no omnipotent entity with that exact goal in mind. Instead, we have a lot of people just going for their own interests, playing politics or corporate game, moved by vanity or greed etc. which often do more harm than good for the company’s supposed goals (not even mentioning larger companies tend to attract certain types of people who are more parasites than “builders”).

This why it’s funny that when the Victoria 3 game was released, people realized and it became news that Communism was more effective to make your country thrive. Well, no shit? You’re playing as an external entity which only purpose is to make your State greater in a century, so the more power over the economy the more effective you are at reaching your goals. Real countries don’t work like that, and the same logic applies to companies.

Re: The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

#210

Post by 666satanhimself »

hourago wrote: post #75

The 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…

[dead]
Post reply on HN