This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Uhhhhh....who thought that was going to be a bright idea? Google is probably the single biggest traffic draw for Reddit.
Especially since reddit search itself has always been laughably broken.
That's what I thought this was about halfway through the headline.
"They've made it this long without a functional search."
I'm pretty sure the admin response to lack of search was "just use Google."
Did Elon secretly buy Reddit?
Funny thing, spez expressed in interviews that he liked Leon's philosophy behind a lot of decision over Twitter.
So there's a lot of truth to that
Edit: I'm gonna tear my autocorrect a new one. It's "Elon Musk" and I hope that's clear.
Not to mention the only way to go back and find something on their site. Their in house search bar is a useless piece of junk. Back when I would use reddit, I would open up google if I had to find something in reddit.
That's literally been life for me for so long when I'm looking up quite a bit of different things. "Blah blah reddit"
The fact that Reddit thinks all that user-generated content is theirs and that they need to protect it from AI is really fucked up.
Reddit itself produces nothing, they wouldn't exist without the users.
Absolutely pathetic that they may block search crawlers over that.
It should be pretty simple: the user generated content are volunteered by the users for free on reddit, therefore the content should belong to the users.
Same thing as with AI, if an AI model is trained with everyone's data, then the AI model should be open and available to everyone.
Reddit administration thinks the site is too big to fail. Lemmy isn't a real competitor to them because the decentralization of federation means that joining an instance and trying to navigate the fediverse is a bit too complex for most people. The reason why massively populated social media sites took off is because people like having everything in one place where everyone else is.
What I could see happening is a well-funded startup creates a fork of Lemmy that they use as the basis for their instance and they can customize and develop as they see fit. This instance would be accessible to everyone already on Lemmy, but they could offer one centralized alternative to Reddit where new users don't have to think about what they need to do to join.
I'm sure that if Lemmy picks up critical mass, it could lower the bar for most people to be willing to jump through the extra hoops. Ultimately federation solves the chicken and egg problem that any social media startup has.
That search is the only reason a lot of people end up on reddit. This won't end well for reddit.
That's Steve emulating Elon again though, he's trying to wreck other people's toys because they're brats.
Lol
Literally the only time I use reddit now that my 3rd party app got fucked by spez is when I Google a problem and reddit pops up as the answer.
Will I ever go to reddit and search for my issue? Hell no because their search function is absolutely useless.
Literally the one reason I still use Reddit is because appending site:reddit.com gives me actual results. Reddits' built-in search results are utter dog shit and you cant find anything. They'd just be shooting themselves in the foot for blocking Google
Literally the only reason why I still bump into Reddit even when I’m not trying to.
Here’s an example from real life. When I searched for “ipados brave yutube ads adblock”, I found some Reddit posts discussing the issue.
Spoiler: Ditch brave and switch to something else.
BTW, Reddit is currently in the “hold my beer” sort of state when it comes to shooting itself in the foot.
It's just me or reddit is copying everything Twitter is doing? Elon Musk did this and rolled it back as soon as it was obvious it was a bad idea.
Spez expressed in interviews that he views Musk’s rampage with twitter as a positive example, so no surprises there
I'm at a loss for words. Surely, YouTube trying to Adwall would be the stupidest thing in social media history. Surely, Musk changing Twitter's name would be the stupidest thing. No, Steve Huffman has somehow managed to surpass the old masters. "We can survive without people being able to find our website VIA SEARCH RESULTS"! YOU. STUPID. MOTHERFUCKER.
The YouTube ad-blocker ban isn't stupid at all.
Something isn't a bad business decision just because you don't like it. That's now how business works.
"I won't watch videos at all if I can't view them without watching ads or paying money."
....Yeah. That's the idea. From a business perspective people who don't pay or view ads are leeches they're perfectly happy to burn off.
This is the pattern dying companies follow.
I do not use a single social media site that requires me to sign in to view it.
They threaten to saw the branch they sit on.
Btw, greed and jealousy are cancers that eat the brain.
Jesus fucking christ. Why are they hell bent on destroying themselves.
The fact that Reddit is available from a search engine is one of the main reasons for its popularity imo.
Literally the only time I ever use reddit is if it is a google result(stopped after 3rd party ban).
I thought the 3rd party app ban was bad but this is pure self destruction.
do Reddit admins think they have any kind of search function without using Google and site:reddit.com?
Look they've already cut off free API access. Here's some other ideas from the Muskrat playbook:
Maybe change the name to P.com
Change the logo to ₱ (surely the Mexicans won't mind that you're using the Peso symbol).
Hmm, why not also charge money to get a blue checkmark by your Reddit username to be a verified Redditor? or maybe call them P-ers?
Oh, how about charging new users $1 to use your platform?
Isn't this an act of cutting off your face to spite your nose? I understand that Reddit wants to monetize it's for AI models. But if the content gets moved into a walled garden, and reddit's own search features don't improve dramatically, then what's the point of going to Reddit?
So Reddit would go from a social open hub, the "front page of the Internet", to a walled garden? Ridiculous.
This would be the literal death for my reddit Account. Only been using it when looking for answers online and stumbling upon reddit threads.
Alright y'all, this is the moment.
Time to go to all those Lemmy Communities about tech support and coding questions, and ask away/ give answers.
GO GO GO!!!
This is the opportunity of a lifetime!
Without google (or any other external search engine) reddit will be a worthless heap. One key feature of reddit was that one could find a lot of good information in relevant subs. A real treasure trove. But you could only find stuff with external engines.
The internal search function was a worthless waste of bits that could not find anything relevant, even if it bit the search function in the a...
Idk if it's possible, but if someone with the resources to make a bot that slowly clone reddit posts to Lemmy, so instead of searching for "something + Reddit" we could search for "something + Lemmy", that would be the end of Reddit, at least for me.
I'm 100% on lemmy now, but occasionally when i need to troubleshoot my PC I still have to search on Google for Reddit posts and I hate myself for giving reddit traffic.
I miss the 2 dozens Cat Subs that flooded my feed with Cat memes and funny cat pics everyday. If anyone knows about any cat subs on Lemmy please reply here.
First Twitter, then reddit, to massive social platforms apparently trying to shoot themselves in the foot at every available opportunity. Never was a Twitter user, but sad to see reddit is likely in a slow death spiral.
Lmao my brother in christ, nobody uses Reddit search because Reddit search is complete ass
They must’ve noticed an uptick in Google traffic. I’ve stopped using reddit for fun and only as a means to find solutions through search engine.
Starting to wish yahoo answers would come back.
I could understand if Reddit's own search was somewhat competent, but it remains terrible.
Lemmy's search is far more flexible, it's just buggy/broken right now – at least for me.
this comment is aimed at those future "just passing through" visitors, who are still on the fence with regards to the fediverse.
any internet power user will know, and be able to tell you that the internet feels wrong as of late. everything that you try to use is slightly broken for some reason. why is it becoming harder to use basic services that we took for granted 5 years ago?
unfortunately, the internet is changing once again, and it's time to pick a side.
you can side with big corpo, stay in their walled ecosystems, and embrace enshittification.
or, you can side with the fediverse, break out of your silo, and take control of your own means of content participation.
the choice is yours.
if you like following concepts or "things" (reddit-style), then try here: https://join-lemmy.org/
or, if you prefer following individuals or "trends" (twitter-style), then try here: https://joinmastodon.org/
Damn still angry about that API?
It's funny seeing the corpos implode because they had record growth, which means nothing can match it in the coming quarters and therefore they're going to have to find someway to meet their stupid investor demands.
The only exemption is Twitter, which is just imploding because Elon is a dumbass and not because of greed.
Reddit is only good for solutions though search results but do it anyway. Make it worse and worse until people start looking for alternatives.
"The more you tighten your grasp, the more systems will slip through your fingers."
Well that's a dumb fucking idea. Do it!
I really, really hope this happens.
At first I thought this was just a bluff... Then I remembered "right! It's 2023! Our economic structures are imploding!"
But seriously, this would be great. At best, Google starts indexing cached versions and they get into a slugging match with Reddit as they both slide down the cliff, at worst Google and Reddit both become useless for all us technical folks, and after the immediate damage to knowledge, it'll become fragmented and open the door to new players still at the "don't be evil" phase of the inevitable path to "become an amoral orphan crushing machine".
Stack overflow and Reddit suck... But not intrinsically.
Especially since generative AI can spin out the basics of a site like that, making it an easy and better structured place for general reference, and draw in the expert discussion that leads to building very specific knowledge bases (and definitely not scrape that info from existing sites and rephrase everything to obscure the fact it's stolen info)
But the one thing we know for sure... Threatening Google to make a deal with all AI companies is "let's make everyone mistrust Twitter until we reach a trust underflow and everyone trusts it as a one stop financial platform + paid advertising posing as microblogging social media" levels of "gradeschoolers could have told you that makes no sense"
Reddit is the current best thing that shows up in Google searches try looking up how to convert a dvd to mp4 you've got so much shite to shift thought before you get to a result that isn't just some company trying to sell their over priced shite
