What do you guys think about this? (Wasn’t sure which community to post this in)
I’ve been linking this text fairly often, but I think that it’s worth a read. People might be focusing on the blackout but that’s just the “now” - with or without blackouts, Reddit is a ticking bomb bound to eventually explode, and all the information there will be lost when it does.
And the fact that people have been relying on Reddit to look for information shows even deeper issues, not just with Reddit but the internet. Let’s see…
- Google monopoly over the search market. Why would it need to make its product better, if you’re still going to use it?
- Corporations always trying to prevent you from reaching the best result (because it won’t lead you to their product), and engaging on an arms race through search engine optimisation. That’s why people did that “reddit” trick.
- The encroachment of the ad industry into the internet. Oh look, I found the content that I wanted… no wait it’s another ad. Move on…
- Governments more often pandering to corporations than defending the best interests of their taxpayers, and the legislation on what’s allowed or disallowed on the internet suffering in result of that.
- Reddit monopoly over discussions.
- People sharing info in Reddit instead of through more resilient forms of digital media, as shown in the link.
Google monopoly over the search market.
Mostly because it’s better than other options though. For instance, when I use DDG, lots of boolean handles just don’t work. If I look for “cat sweater -dog”, I’m going to get nothing but dog sweaters. I find fewer useful, productive results on DDG than I do on Google. Other search engines are often even worse.
I think it’s a major loss considering the SEO garbage results you get nowadays. But the fault is on Reddit for doing this to themself, don’t forget.
Reddit needs to be replaced sooner or later. Unless they stay true to their goal and never have capital screwing the community.
A federated and community-based services is the better way to keep useful conversation on the internet to help everyone.
I wish the internet archive took over reddit as just another public service.
I already encountered this a few times while searching for something specific. Even though the protests are understandable it makes it so much harder to find information.
I think it would be more accurate to say that Google has gotten a lot worse over time, and removing the crutch of reddit results is making that suddenly more obvious. Google results mostly suck, but you can sometimes find what you’re actually looking for on reddit.
Today I got a feeling of that!