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Reddit is taking over Google

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Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#201

Post by xsmasher »

gary_0 wrote: post #50
jedberg wrote: post #29

To this day, my most public contribution to reddit is that I wrote the code to put the title of the post in the URL. That was done specifically for SEO purposes. It was pretty much the only SEO optimization we ever did (along with a few DOM changes), because shortly after that, Google basically dedicated engineering effort specifically to crawling reddit. So much so that we lost the "crawl rate" button in our SEO adm…

> That was done specifically for SEO purposes. As a human I also like it when I can see what topic a URL points to (eg. when it's being shared on HN, or pasted into source code, etc). URLs that just have an opaque ID or terse filename are not very user-friendly.

I agree; I wish JIRA did this. I actually asked for this feature in their support forum yers ago and got a chorus of "that's stupid, why would anyone want that?" in reply.

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#202

Post by struant »

AbraKdabra wrote: post #104
bun_terminator wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how they still have mods. Reddits boss hates them. Everyone else, too. They have 100% a negative impact. The site would be wonderful without moderation as that's already covered by the voting mechanism.

I help moderate a large sub, a country sub. I dare you to just be a mod for one week, the amount of SHIT that gets posted every single fucking day is insane, without mods (good or bad) reddit would be worse than 4chan in its crappier moment. A disclaimer, I'm super against on how reddit is being managed nowadays, I've been a user since 2010, the golden era, no political bias crap, no stupid woke mods, everyone was ha…

Is it mostly spam that makes you think moderation is necessary or is it something else?

I ask because I have some ideas about how to implement a moderation-less reddit-alike. (I think I know how to eliminate spam)

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#203

Post by asdff »

piafraus wrote: post #84
haunter wrote: post #16

I still prefer reddit most of the time. Front page (default) subs are highly manipulated (especially anything news, politics, current things etc.) but for hobbies, video games, and sports it's still the best site. Video game discusssions especially because unlike Discord every tip, guide, and walkthrough is archived and searchable. And for sports mostly because it's _insane_ how quickly you get highlights and videos.…

> I can't ready my city's sub because it's always the same tired politics posts instead of "what are some good restaurants" or "here is a photo of a building I've never seen before". I find it funny, that I am completely opposite. I would very much prefer the local news/politics/crime, as this directly affects me and my life - e.g. don't go to the highway today, because protestors block it. Vs. the boring similar pho…

Usually the local news/politics/crime data slants a certain way you could probably guess. E.g. I used to argue with redditors about how they assume the local metro is nothing but homeless people and you will get mugged, citing my years and years of use with no issue and seeing plenty of seemingly sober and straight arrow people on my commute, but no. It goes against the prevailing narrative that everything is irredeemable and shitty. I lost my energy to engage with these people before long, I wish I lost it even sooner.

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#204

Post by floxy »

robswc wrote: post #195
some_random wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with mods is that normal people do not have the interest nor energy to moderate a subreddit past a certain point, so they end up getting muscled out by weirdos as a sub grows.

This is 1000% the reason. It almost self-selects for the worst type of people. You not only have to have tons of free time, you have to be willing to be "paid" for your work in the small amounts of power you can wield in an online discussion board. In theory if you have a few people they could contribute a bit of time and have it covered... but like you say, the weirdos "out-spend" them on time and muscle their way i…

Worst of all, we probably have now immortalized this behavior in-the-before-AI-times archive, so that if you want to have an AI moderator, it will probably try to mimic the broken behavior.

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#205

Post by asdff »

haunter wrote: post #16

I still prefer reddit most of the time. Front page (default) subs are highly manipulated (especially anything news, politics, current things etc.) but for hobbies, video games, and sports it's still the best site. Video game discusssions especially because unlike Discord every tip, guide, and walkthrough is archived and searchable. And for sports mostly because it's _insane_ how quickly you get highlights and videos.…

State subs are even worse. the /r/california subreddit is an open karma farm. Used to be posted by /u/BlankVerse, now looks like he changed his username to Randomlynumbered but still dominates the subbreddit of supposedly half a million users.

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#206

Post by MikePlacid »

piafraus wrote: post #84
haunter wrote: post #16

I still prefer reddit most of the time. Front page (default) subs are highly manipulated (especially anything news, politics, current things etc.) but for hobbies, video games, and sports it's still the best site. Video game discusssions especially because unlike Discord every tip, guide, and walkthrough is archived and searchable. And for sports mostly because it's _insane_ how quickly you get highlights and videos.…

> I can't ready my city's sub because it's always the same tired politics posts instead of "what are some good restaurants" or "here is a photo of a building I've never seen before". I find it funny, that I am completely opposite. I would very much prefer the local news/politics/crime, as this directly affects me and my life - e.g. don't go to the highway today, because protestors block it. Vs. the boring similar pho…

> boring similar photos I've probably already saw like 100 times from a slightly different angle

I’ve started a blog about my summer house in the Sierra Nevada foothills as a way to stay connected with friends and family. Suddenly, I have around 100 subscribers… from Russia, as the blog is in Russian. Although it may not feature anything particularly extraordinary, such as the sky, plants, and animals, these things remain captivating to me. The ever-changing scenery, including the sky, apricot and lilac trees, raccoons, cats, and deer, seems not boring to my readers too. It’s incredible to think that a hundred people in Russia are concerned alongside me when a stray cat returns after my absence in California… We also laugh together on California politics but not very often.

The blog is hosted on Telegram, not Reddit though - for obvious reasons.

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#207

Post by asdff »

bogtog wrote: post #133
rifty wrote: post #112

The relationship between Google and Reddit goes beyond just improving normal web search for Google - it's actually symbiotic. Because Reddit has horrible search, the best way to search Reddit content is actually using Google's indexing instead. Every time the Google algorithm feeds Reddit, it's feeding itself with more '...reddit' queries. Further, I feel the role subreddits are playing is not too different to the ro…

> Because Reddit has horrible search Sorry, but I've heard this so often, and I just don't know what people mean. I use the search whenever I need to get something from a specific subreddit, and it just seems fine. Also, why would a major website like Reddit have such a bad search? Aren't mostly fine search algorithms freely available?

Google does a better job of taking your exact search and returning fuzzy results that are pretty relevant (usually extremely relevant), whereas reddit search just pulls up results that have your terms in them as they are written. Google might also do some ranking based on other users searching for similar things, while afaik reddit is pretty "dumb" search.

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#208

Post by heresie-dabord »

downrightmike wrote: post #188

Google doesn't understand search.

There is an interesting nuance. GOOG's search is a cash cow.

An ordinary ("having a single motivation") person wants information about something.

Similarly, a search-engine having a single motivation to provide quality search results will seek to provide quality search results.

The GOOG of 2024 is a Dorothy gone very far from Kansas. It has many lucrative goals and Quality Search is not at the top of the list.

"Training an LLM on Reddit" is about as far from quality as one can derail without venturing into the outright dysfunctional nastiness of the worst corners of the Deranged Web.

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#209

Post by brookst »

bogtog wrote: post #133
rifty wrote: post #112

The relationship between Google and Reddit goes beyond just improving normal web search for Google - it's actually symbiotic. Because Reddit has horrible search, the best way to search Reddit content is actually using Google's indexing instead. Every time the Google algorithm feeds Reddit, it's feeding itself with more '...reddit' queries. Further, I feel the role subreddits are playing is not too different to the ro…

> Because Reddit has horrible search Sorry, but I've heard this so often, and I just don't know what people mean. I use the search whenever I need to get something from a specific subreddit, and it just seems fine. Also, why would a major website like Reddit have such a bad search? Aren't mostly fine search algorithms freely available?

Reddit search is good if you know what you're looking for -- specific words, preferably a time period.

It is terrible as a semantic search. If you go to r/travel and search for "France", it will not turn up posts about Paris unless the post specifically includes "france".

Re: Reddit is taking over Google

#210

Post by asdff »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #15

The only problem is bad advice that can come up quite often on Reddit. There are various subreddits where young people ask for advice and other young people with no experience are giving advice that might influence others negatively. Otherwise, Reddit is great for technical stuff and niche community communication.

>Otherwise, Reddit is great for technical stuff and niche community communication.

I used to believe this but its becoming clear to me that for just about every subbreddit for my different niche interests, a common theme emerges of a dogma endorsed by the community. This might be a concept, an idea, a tool, something sold, something not sold, but whatever it is, the community latches on it hard and doesn't let go. If you offer different experiences to the contrary of the dogma of the day people either ignore you at best or downvote and get combative.

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