Reddit can't build a better search engine
1–10 of 289 posts
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#2Building a good search engine is hard
It gets worse if the content you're trying to index are labeled with the same titles like "me_irl". While they're usually just pointless memes, there are occasionally a few gems that I would like to find again to share with friends but it's basically impossible with such poor signals. I think it's a bit sad that those rare gems are essentially lost and forgotten.
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#3Thanks for posting op, it's interesting to think about.
> Reddit posts are good because the people who create these posts or make comments are doing it to share their knowledge.
I would offer a bit of a different perspective here, I think maybe even most do it for what you could call self-soothing.
For example, a lot of people share knowledge, but it's _their knowledge_, which can also be defined as _sharing their subjective past_ and that's known to be a very soothing thing for people who may even be troubled by the unknown in their personal lives. Hop online, boom, you're a domain expert in your own past. Find a place that's _about your past_, be it /r/linux or /r/formula1 or whatever, and there you go, it's comfy. You generally get an upvote + reply vibes dopamine bonus just for being there, due to your relevant past.
So, Reddit's sooth-sayers (so to speak) are kind of lazy but incentivized-lazy in some ways, which I think can also speak to some issues with the platform surrounding cognitive blind spots and what some here have called the echo chamber effect. That's an opportunity for a new search engine, in some ways, but it also may offer insights to new services that could be even more effective.
> And there is no financial incentive associated with it. [posting on Reddit]
There is though. I mean I've myself been financially incentivized into doing it, as have probably many, many others. Nothing sneaky, even.
You've got people posting their stuff all over the place, and the more community or indie or niche it is, the more welcomed is the post-as-advertisement or comment-as-advertisement. And that's not even going into corporate efforts to operate on the platform, which can be very subtle.
> However, once Reddit creates a search engine, and once people get to know that there is an opportunity to game the system and create a financial opportunity,
Perhaps--but Google was _really_ good for a very long time. That was worth a lot to millions of people.
I like to think that in the future, an ecosystem-mindset toward incentive systems could really help, like planning for different emergent systems that incentivize good results.
Anyway, fun to think about, thanks again.
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#4This is exactly right: if Reddit ever decided to build a search engine they'd wind up destroying their site, because everyone would try to game the results and fill Reddit with crap to do it.
The point it is that search engines are adversarial: people who are skilled and determined are actively trying to replace good results with their results.
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#5The idea of reddit building competent software is hard to take seriously. I am appalled every time I try to buy an ad. Those folks have no idea what they are doing. Rank amateurs.
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#6This is exactly right: if Reddit ever decided to build a search engine they'd wind up destroying their site, because everyone would try to game the results and fill Reddit with crap to do it. The point it is that search engines are adversarial: people who are skilled and determined are actively trying to replace good results with their results.
This is a good point I'd never considered before. The better your search, the more people will try to game it, the worse your results will get.
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#7But the practice of appending 'reddit' to your Google search isn't depending on Reddit building a better search engine. It's using Google's search engine, and trying to direct it to a database that you hope has the answer you're looking for. So there's that. Of course, if that practice became widespread, then people could still try to stuff Reddit posts with junk in the hope that it gets picked up by Google in these searches, and then the Reddit folks would have to try to filter that out.
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#8This is exactly right: if Reddit ever decided to build a search engine they'd wind up destroying their site, because everyone would try to game the results and fill Reddit with crap to do it. The point it is that search engines are adversarial: people who are skilled and determined are actively trying to replace good results with their results.
one advantage that reddit has is that its content is community moderated. People may have an incentive to game search, but communities have an incentive to keep the content authentic. Not to mention that Reddit as a platform also has some means to restrict spam accounts.
Google if it does this sort of clean-up at all has to do so algorithmically which is kind of shoddy. Reddit basically gets a human workforce for free, so I'm not so sure the comparison holds.
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#9This is exactly right: if Reddit ever decided to build a search engine they'd wind up destroying their site, because everyone would try to game the results and fill Reddit with crap to do it. The point it is that search engines are adversarial: people who are skilled and determined are actively trying to replace good results with their results.
This is a good point I'd never considered before. The better your search, the more people will try to game it, the worse your results will get.
yes, however there is an element of real feedback: if an subreddit turns out to be garbage, then people will choose a different subreddit with a different moderation policy. It is possible to prioritize by number of point or by some dynamics over the popularity of an subreddit - that would incorporate this feedback.
Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine
#10> I was too young to use Google when it first got started, but according to many, in the beginning, Google had better or more accurate search results. One reason for this was the fact that most of the sites back then were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing information.
> But I think all can agree that Google results reduced when people started to game the algorithm and create search engine optimized garbage websites.
Well not quite.
There were piles of SEO crap sites being produced in 2001. Google used to manage to react to any new exploit and improve their results. They actively fought that battle for at least a decade or so. They used to win.
It is only more recently that they seem to have given up.