GOOD!
I’ve actively found this as well but honestly, I think it’s for the best because most of the time Reddit posts with actual answers aren’t well-cited. So if anyone asks how you know something, “uhh Reddit told me” is pretty weak. So Google is getting better because Reddit has gotten worse. It means that you have to go to the actual articles and find the actual sources instead of this daisy chain of information. We have a huge issue with misinformation and this actually helps resolve it.
For many people google (or whatever engine) was just a gateway to get informations on reddit. With all those sub reddits down at the moment, a lot of searches are really hard to get informations, because like it, or not, reddit is a big part of getting informations or opinions etc.
Reddit actions are tragic for the web. I can’t even tell you how many times I searched something and typed Reddit at the end of the query. Not just because Reddit search SUCKS, but mostly because it’s a gold mine of information. Especially for technical stuff.
Your game crash? Reddit. Weird bug on your laptop? Reddit. Looking for a cool app? Reddit. Have a weird question? Reddit.
Reddit saved me countless hours and headache. I felt that yesterday when doing a search about something without even putting Reddit on it, kept bringing up Reddit links. I’d click on it without reading and end up on a locked sub because of the blackout.
It sucks but I hope it’s going to continue. But at the same time, I don’t see Reddit backing down. And even lf they do? I’m not going back. Because how dare you? Like… screw you for even trying to pull that crap on your users.
Reddit is the web we built. And fuck u/spez decided to give it away for money.
I miss Aaron Swartz and the open web. Let’s rebuilt it again, on better foundations!
Try using ChatGPT if you haven’t. Ive used Reddit in the past for a lot of troubleshooting, but ChatGPT is easier to get the answers I’m looking for unless I asked the question myself. But there’s no judgement from ChatGPT lol
Though, take care to factcheck what you get from it; all it really is is just a word predictor, and it can be pretty good at confidently telling you absolute nonsense that sounds right
Definitely true, however my usage of it has been to troubleshoot code. I wouldn’t suggest using it for research purposes
honestly we should have collectively realized way earlier that putting all the useful, readable, un-touched-by-SEO help content for basically every niche hobby fandom and ideology in the hands of one for-profit entity was not very wisdom-pilled of us
we should have collectively realized way earlier
some people have, but whenever you’d mention it, you’d be met with “lol take the tinfoil hat off”, “but we’re already using [for-profit platform] why would we move when everyone’s here” and “but it’s haaaaaaard”.
Source: https://xkcd.com/743/
The fact that the alt-text directly mentions Diaspora is more than amusing in this context
Hey! I’m not probably autistic! I’m definitely autistic, there’s a difference!
we can still easily fall into this trap if there isn’t a good way to migrate communities between instances. And even if we could just take /c/technology@beehaw.org and move the whole thing to /c/technology@feddit.de or something, that would still break all the indexers’ links
What we really need is some sort of torrent-like system for this content with something equivalent to magnet links.
Sounds like you’re describing ipfs :D
I love the idea of IPFS, but every time I’ve tried to use it, it has always been very slow.
I agree, but I also have serious concerns about this being the replacement strategy. It could be because of my ignorance of how this all works though. Like many of you, I am new and here because of the reddexodus.
These servers are going to cost money, and for many of them the money will run out. Is there a function to preserve the collective content of an entire server once it goes dark? I know that you can migrate your own account to another server, but what happens to everything Google has indexed at Lemmy.world if the worst happens? Is it all just dead links? What if many of the users do not migrate? Is it just gone?
I am concerned that in the current state we are setting up to burn everything that loses a couple admins or becomes too old to economically host.
I was on a mastodon server and the owner decided it was not worth his money to keep running. He did not inform anyone on the server or allow any account backups and all was lost.
I’m sorry, but clearly you have not looked for niche information on Google for a while now. Lots of links end in dead ones, particularly when I am looking for vehicle information on older models.
I’m not sure what you are trying to say, we shouldn’t be concerned because this problem already happened?
A lot niche older vehicle information, if it wasn’t hosted on Reddit, was often on forums funded by enthusiasts, which eventually ran out of money and no longer exist. This is exactly the problem that I’m concerned about. Particularly so if a certain community balloons in popularity and an admin nukes it to keep the server costs under control for the other members.
Completely what I’m saying, but to add on it is not just forums. With the new web, I’ve hit a deadend on many OEM websites as well, and part websites, and others. I’m sure cell phone and computer information is similar, in fact after trying to research a power supply for my old prebuilt I know it’s a fight.
Before reddit removed them most of this compiled knowledge was in the subreddit wikis. I honestly believe a return to communities with wikis is the long term replacement.
I just can’t agree more with you. Like wow this reddit blackout has truthfully opened my eyes to the massive, giant and incredibly amount of useful information that is currently resting on reddit servers.
Tacking “Reddit” onto search queries almost became a prerequisite. Never imagined I’d have to replace that with “-Reddit”.
It’s made researching a media centre setup very difficult this week…
Give it some time, people will get comfortable here, the revolution dust will settle an we will be adding ‘-Reddit “Lemmy”’ to search queries (fingers crossed!)
But how would this work with broader federation? Searching other instances like beehaw or kbin? We’ll needan new search optimization to search the fediverse more efficiently.
I guess google will just have to suck less if they want us to keep using it.
I think it’s more appropriate to say that internet searches in general had been getting worse over the last several years, but it just so happened to be the case that your answer could likely be found in a reddit thread.
Am I the only one that’s noticed how reddit has been fucking with web crawlers? They insert newer comments into older posts so the crawlers pick up false results.
A few years back they started injecting a “related posts” box into pages. What that does is multiply the amount of results a crawler will pick up. But all those are false results. There’s only one true search result which is the original comment/post. Some times I find myself sifting though the search engine results to find the actual original post. The rest are completely worthless, off topic, reddit posts littering the search index.
I know all this blackout stuff hurts now. I see it as necessary for the platform to lose its status as the “front page of the internet”. Reddit turned evil a long time ago. It’s long past time it be deposed of.
100% agree
I couldn’t understand how those changes back then crippling the user experience were “better” in any way, this explains a lot!
That explains why the search page quotes a comment that doesn’t exist on the post. That always confused me. It’s insane how dependent on searching with “reddit” appended on the end of the search term I am. I have qualms as to how this’ll bode for search engines if reddit loses interest or goes under.
Makes me want to go back and edit my posts to f*** /u/spez because I don’t want them getting traffic off of my content. But also don’t want that entire collection of human data gone if everyone did the same.
Too bad we can’t all export and reconstruct our conversations here somehow.
My posts are 99% shitposts anyway, so it doesn’t really matter, nothing constructive to mankind.
Do it. Use “Power Delete Suite”, it has an option to edit comments before deleting everything.
Ah yes, working as intended. It’s probably affecting people more than reddit themselves. Hope the content draught continues though.
It is - but you can still access via archive.org and similar resources.
Doesn’t help for searches though
I’ve made a bad habit of attaching the word “reddit” to the end of too many of my searches even for questions that I should be looking for their answers in trusted sources instead of taking answers from random redditors the blackout has helped a little with avoiding that.
I’ve definitely felt like my Google searches have been lackluster after a lot of subreddits went dark. from advices to game communities, it sucks to check other forums you have no knowledge of browsing or worse shudders quora
Wait until Google bots catch up and drop many of the links back to Reddit.
Or only return GCache pages for Reddit.
I just add “forum” to the back of my search
