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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

#361
post #26
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…

Happens to all social media because in order to succeed you need a critical mass of users. The best way to get this is to make it free.

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

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but everybody who googles and finds reddit results either ignores them or clicks to join everybody who uses reddit...

well I guess if I'm gonna start arguing semantics with you, this is a valid come-back. so, "use" in my reply means "actively using, creating posts & comments" while "use" in your post means "view content". Is that a fair summary? I think I'll end the definition game here. :D

I thought your response was good thumbsup_emoji.jpg It's an interesting question "who is entitled to see reddit communities up and running at all times" and "how much public-interest is being affected"

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

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, Facebook, Reddit etc are the tower though. Not the WWW.

No, Google, Facebook, and Reddit are the languages spoken on the WWW that annihilated all the others. Then God comes down and breaks them up. The Tower of Babel was the original silo.

[deleted]

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

#364
post #102
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…

Email is dying too. I have run my own email server for 20 years. A few years ago my original ISP was acquired, forcing me to switch providers and hence get a new IP address. Ever since then my server has been blacklisted by one major player or another as a source of spam. I even tried changing to a new IP address, but the result of that was just a different set of providers blacklisting me. I'm about ready to throw i…

migadu is a good option too

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

#365
post #208

Earlier 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…

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.

Here are some of the broader non-gaming Discord communities I lurk in:

- The Lost Media Wiki

- Our Startups

- Flashbots

- Freqtrade

- Defi Dojo

- AI Nordics

- Homework Help

- Science and Technology

- Refold Central

- Seasteading

- Ocean Builders

- ASC (Atlantic Sea Colony)

- Vital Audio

- GPU Audio

- MakingHipHop

Every single content creator also seems to have a Discord server nowadays.

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

#366
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end, what you need if you want really reliable self hosting is to own your own ASN and IP range, so you can tightly control the quality. Review how clean the addresses are before purchasing them and continuously review it for the duration you own them, as some been used for spam previously.

> to own your own ASN and IP range Can I have a puppy too?

It's quite expensive, yes. But removes a lot of headaches (while introducing some new ones), is a great learning exercise and is most probably a solid investment when it comes to ipv4 at least, prices keep going up and it won't just disappear in the near future.

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

#367
post #20

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.

This is a huge, huge, huge problem and Google I feel could work to solve this. NEWS (heh it contains new) is important to be up-to-date and recent. But so many things are olds and you should give more weight to older pagerank-verified pages.

Side-thought: I have at times wished Google had a time machine function, for example, "show me the results that this search would have returned in 2008".

It would open up a whole new world of chronological meta analysis; a new dimension of cross-referencing.

[I understand that Google has, or had, some limited incarnation of this, in the form of it's Time Range search, but - and without looking deeply into it - I suspect that is an algorithmically different procedure than the one I am describing. That is, I expect that applies a simple filter to a current search, rather than being The Actual Old Search Results]

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

#368
post #343
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you hosting on?

Linode.

Don't throw in the towel, switch ISP.

You can do everything right but are being judged by the history of your IP address with it's neighbours in the same AS block.

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

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ... non-profit approach ... It may be a better way to go for a public forum like Reddit. Don't kid yourself though into thinking the non-profit foundation won't also be rife with petty politics, hidden agendas, and the usual crap. There will still be issues, and how to handle NSFW content is still going to be a big conflict.

| Don't kid yourself though into thinking the non-profit foundation

Those aren't the problems I was expecting to solve. Those are other problems that exist regardless of funding model, because they're fundamentally social problems.

A non-profit funding model simply solves the problem of venture capital undermining the core product in search of profits.

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

#370
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh please. The consolidation has affected email equally to the point where "email" is synonymous to "gmail". No one is signing up for email by searching for other email clients, setting up SMTP and whatnot. They go to Google, search for "email" click on the sign up link to "gmail" and carry on. I hardly believe even more than 1% of email users even know about its federated nature Unless Mastodon has similarly sensibl…

You’re missing the point. Just like most people have no idea how their post office functions, really. And most people have no idea how their email service functions except at the most basic level, they understand enough to use it. For most nontechnical people I know, they’re more likely to be using yahoo or aol vs gmail.
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