this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023

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‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 year ago by shish_mish to c/news

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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[–] GONADS125 81 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Absolutely hilarious that they think they can remove 3rd party search engines when reddit itself can't be navigated for shit, especially with their atrocious search feature. Blocking 3rd party search engines just ensures no one will be able to find any specific posts/content.

Literally the only time I've gone back to reddit in months is to find an answer for a game-related issue from a search engine query. Forcing a log-in or disabling search engines is just going to ensure less traffic/none from me.

Just like with Twitter, it seems like the reddit team is purposefully tanking their platform. I understand that much of it is for short-sighted payout, but even then, their decisions have been asinine and self-sabotaging.

[–] Candelestine 23 points 1 year ago

Seriously.

I literally cannot think of a faster way to throttle reddit to death without physically shutting off the service. It's like they went from hammering nails into the coffin one by one and just encased the whole thing in cement.

You need constant inflows of new users to services like these. Even if nobody ever chose to scale back their usage or quit, people eventually just die. Netizens are no different.

[–] Darkard 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think we are all making an assumption here that the Reddit search function isn't working exactly as intended.

They don't want you to find want you are looking for immediately and then leave. They want you to be clicking about on the site for an hour. Absorbing ads, inflating statistics

[–] Linuto 22 points 1 year ago

Or even better, making a new post to ask the same question again.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Appending “site:reddit.com” to a Google search has become a popular trick for weeding SEO farms and other attention-seeking websites out of Google results, but if this change goes through, you might not be able to access Reddit from search at all.

Even this article knows.

If this goes through then my reddit usage will officially reach 0, as Google results are how I end up there nowadays anyway.

[–] nero 19 points 1 year ago

Same for me, only use it for questions on niche topics mostly, but if they remove themselves from google i won’t do that either.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yup. It’s a huge shame, because

site:reddit.com …some nuanced technical problem or error..

is often just as good as - if not better than - stackoverflow.

Ah well, guess we’ll all have to memorize some more computer science things…

[–] rjc 4 points 1 year ago

Sure wish there was an easy way to do this with Lemmy.

[–] ReadyUser31 3 points 1 year ago

It just sucks that we're gonna lose a decade of community knowledge on so many topics. Honestly if I have a question for the internet, whether it's dealing with bugs on my houseplants or buying water proof walking boots, I always add 'reddit' to my Google searches.

Shane there isn't a way to move it all on to a stackoverflow type site.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I use untrackme on Android to redirect Searx results to RedReader, and to redirect Voyager or Eternity to Stealth. I deleted all my accounts, I will delete those redirects if this happens.

ETA : I can't find the arstechnica article, but this has been a thing for awhile. Reddit search is garbage, you have always needed an outside search to find anything.

[–] RestrictedAccount 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting that

can survive

is now the goal

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nice catch.

You're right, in the world of business where everyone's lying all the time a little freudian slip like that speaks volumes.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

Do it, /u/spez. I dare you.

[–] teotwaki 32 points 1 year ago

The irony is that Reddit thinks their internal search can in any way, shape or form compete with Google or other actual search engines. People use Google to find stuff on Reddit because Reddit's own search is hopeless.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

So if I'm understanding this correctly, reddit aims to become more profitable by selling "its" data to companies that are training AI. Google et al are currently "scraping" this data and thus getting for free what reddit considers valuable.

Spez is out of his good goddang mind.

Google is too big to care what reddit does. They'll scrape elsewhere or "accidentally" steal the data rather than pay a dime.

[–] topperharlie 12 points 1 year ago

I know that everyone and their mom are in the hype train of AI, but we still don't know if its here to stay or not. Basing your whole strategy on a tech hype trend to the point of antagonising google... seems a bit too far fetch.

sure today Reddit results are still a thing that makes sense, but is it really too big to fail? if they're not in Google no significant amount of new users will sign up. between that, the exodus and other stuff wouldn't the content rot relatively quickly?

on the other hand social sites have huge inertia (still surprises me how many people are in twitter), reddit bros probably just wants to sell high to retire and the stock market bros are the dumbest people with a gambling addiction anyway... so the move might work..

Man, I wish economy didn't depend that much on the stock bros... reddit? IDGAF, they can succeed or fail, I don't use it anyway, but the power these dumbs have globally is so scary.

[–] Tygr 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Haha, that’s amazing! Reddit doesn’t know their analytics and metrics. They don’t realize how many people add “Reddit” to their searches to get the opinion of the people, not affiliate marketing blogs.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This is the main reason I no longer am active on Reddit. I object to them monetizing content I create. They can monetize many aspects of the site and that’s fine but whatever I create is either free to all, or monetizanle by me but not by the host of that content.

[–] xc2215x 2 points 1 year ago

Reddit will suffer from doing that.

[–] TheOhNoNotAgain -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why is content collection for generative AI so much worse than for search indexes?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Big tech companies aren't bothered that it happens, they're bothered they're not personally profiting from it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Create artificial scarcity
???
Profit!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Because the search index redirects the user to your site. The ai model just directly presents the data to the user without them having to go to your site, or in most cases, even knowing where the information is from.