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The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes

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

#291

Post by smallerfish »

jtode wrote: post #259
willio58 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this not a centralizing measure? This is where things fundamentally break down for me.

[false quote narrative removed, I had names mixed up] Not in the slightest. You see, you can use mastodon.social for exactly as long as it suits you to do so. If you're the type who will simply never wrap your head around federation, stay there. Sorted. If you figure it out eventually, you can take all of your content and migrate it to whatever new instance you like. No hassle, no corporation making it difficult beca…

> If you're the type who will simply never wrap your head around federation, stay there. Sorted.

So, 99% of users will stay there, and another 0.9% for the network effect of interacting with the 99%. Right?

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

#292

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

shigawire wrote: post #68
dylan604 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for those of us without an android device to try this, care to enlighten us? the way it is described it sounds like a lot of of action required which seems like a good thing, but your point seems like it's trying to make goog's results bad. i'm really not following your point

This shows a bunch of articles based on your search history - many of which are incredibly poor quality and appear to be generated in some way. I tried to curate mine for a bit and thumbs down useless sites or content I don't care about. I didn't really succeed in making this feed helpful so I mostly ignore it.

Google appears to think that I have one sole interest, which is The Lord of the Rings. And that I want to read endless poorly researched and sensationally headlined articles on differences between the novel and the films. It never recommends me anything else in that section.

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

#293

Post by throw9away6 »

BashiBazouk wrote: post #50

If it's this important to google, couldn't they just buy Reddit with what amounts to pocket change? That would be an interesting plot twist...

Bing should buy Reddit and kill Google. This blackout has really revealed how bad Google Is and give reliant it is on Reddit working. Buy Reddit for peanuts, sell Google api access or block them entirely from indexing

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

#294

Post by rfgmendoza »

bioemerl wrote: post #8
delfinom wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't suppress web forums, they instead went to prioritize SEO factors that of course SEO spammers maximized to abuse. Of course the Google solution was to prioritize reddit because people were searching for " reddit" due to said SEO spam.

They definitely suppress web forums. There are a few I frequent that are prevalent on bing but nowhere to be seen on Google. Maybe it's just a difference in phrasing. Promoting clean SEO companies is suppressing web forums.

bing accounts for your history in promoting search results. and has a different algorithm to google, inevitable really because google's algorithm is secret and unknowable.

the problem is that google WANTs to promote forums because forums are reliable sources of truth, but with automation all they can do is look for subject authority markers (incoming link count, keywords, text references on other highly authoritative pages, etc)

SEO as an industry is about optimizing those markers to appear above "organic" results in a search page.

changing the markers only means the SEO industry will adjust to target the new priorities, but forum operators are always the last to optimize. it's a fundamentally unwinnable game

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

#295

Post by toastercat »

edrxty wrote: post #204
toastercat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's too bad, because a lot of open-source projects have moved to Discord, and it's an absolute pain that every time I want to search, I have to 1. login and 2. join yet another Discord server.

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

#296

Post by jtode »

smallerfish wrote: post #291
jtode wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[false quote narrative removed, I had names mixed up] Not in the slightest. You see, you can use mastodon.social for exactly as long as it suits you to do so. If you're the type who will simply never wrap your head around federation, stay there. Sorted. If you figure it out eventually, you can take all of your content and migrate it to whatever new instance you like. No hassle, no corporation making it difficult beca…

> If you're the type who will simply never wrap your head around federation, stay there. Sorted. So, 99% of users will stay there, and another 0.9% for the network effect of interacting with the 99%. Right?

I dunno, the experiment is in motion. The hope is always that people will open their minds and learn the concepts. But I feel just as lost watching a sports event as a lot of folks apparently feel picking an instance, so I get it.

Edit: the thing is, even the totally incurious might run up against a rule they don't like, or they might notice that every post that is relevant to them ends with @sexy.gazebos and get curious what that means. I am 100% positive that that curiosity plus a 100IQ is enough to get the idea.

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

#297

Post by toastal »

monero-xmr wrote: post #242
TimPC wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse for only the metric by which the efforts of a group should be indexed for the masses. But people use discord for group conversation and the goal is not the create content for consumption but to do the things the group does as a semi-private organization. Discord seems like a massive win on some dimensions of privacy even with the drawback of not being able to index all the things. I agree discord is b…

Exactly! There is a market for something that more closely replicates conversations in a bar. Sometimes you want to be a blow-hard and say some crazy shit without it being indexed for all eternity.

Except it’s often used in a way that goes beyond chitchat and bouncing ideas. I was pretty active in a programming community a few years ago, and then they decided to move official chat exclusively Discord which I disagree with on principle & was not going to create an account. Some (not all) decisions I would have previously expected to see on the forum got discussed and decided within Discord’s proprietary walls which cut some users out that previously were a part of the discussion.

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

#298

Post by andrewljohnson »

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…

That reddit used to be an IRC and before that a usenet. The wheel turns.

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

#299

Post by BashiBazouk »

balder1991 wrote: post #245
BashiBazouk wrote: post #50

If it's this important to google, couldn't they just buy Reddit with what amounts to pocket change? That would be an interesting plot twist...

I just had this thought. Seems like user generated content is gonna be very valuable from now on, so wouldn’t it be good for companies like Microsoft to foster new websites like Reddit?

If it's perceived as profitable or core to the business, the latter more likely, I would not be surprised if quite a few companies try their hand at a reddit like endeavor. I hold out hope that who ever owns slashdot would add user generated categories and integrate the meta moderation system to keep check on the volunteer mods that it would require...

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

#300

Post by sosuke »

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 see this opinion often. I hold it myself. But I don't know how to have individuals hosting zero maintenance secure platforms. The amount to learn how to do a community administration is both difficult and obscure.

The normal used to be hosting a phpbb forum and moving on. Now that doesn't seem feasible to protect from bad actors.

I have a webserver I admin and I found a crypto miner happily running away on it one day. I still have no idea how it got there.

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