‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google

Google search results are literally the only time I read Reddit content these days, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that regard. They're going to lose so many views if they block their content on Google.

Literally the single prominent technical problem that has spanned Reddit's entire life is the lack of a decent search engine. In general, people fell back to Google because Reddit's was abysmal.

So is Reddit gonna finally build something decent? Because if they don't let Google index them, and they disabled Pushshift access, it's gonna be hard to search the content.

Oh no that is a very bad idea. Google search is the only way to find things on reddit

that's literally the only reason i still end up visiting the site after I left it

That sounds like something someone who has never tried to use reddit's own search would say.

Reddit might cut off Google and force users to log in to Reddit itself to read anything, if it can’t reach deals with generative AI companies to pay for its data.

On the one hand I really hope this happens. On the other hand, it would be devastating to the communities. But this shows how Reddit has the last say and can hold the content hostage on their platform. People need to stop using Reddit and switch to open and free alternatives, that is not controlled by a single entity / company. The problem is, there is lot of good legacy content and solutions that would be not available for most people searching the web.

But for the search engines who do not respect robot files, would still be able to index. Right? Ironically an AI could also write summaries...

The only time I ever go onto Reddit is when I google something and it leads there

Reddit's big claim to fame is having results show up in Google searches. Removing it would probably hurt Reddit (and to some extent Google). I'm just hoping that enough content gets indexed by Google for Lemmy and similar sites, as the best content creators don't just reside on Reddit.

I don't think they can.

Dear Investors to Reddit's upcoming IPO

We have been making some exciting changes to ready the company for our public offering. Please read on for the exciting details.

First, we want to reassure investors that we've worked hard since June, 2023 to alienate our most active users, who have been cluttering Reddit with non-profitable, straightforward discussion and help for years, and ensure that users cannot access our platform with reliable, convenient smartphone apps.

And we know it's not enough to merely insult the people who have donated substantial parts of their lives to make our platform valuable; we're also planning for the future. As you may have recently heard, we're introducing a system to directly pay users who reliably produce the most attention-grabbing clickbait content. We are confident this will ensure that if those long-time users ever feel like returning, they will only find a hellscape of low-effort, reheated viral content and memes, accompanied by consistent, reliable comment sections of karma-farming bots and users.

But there's more! We today announce that search engine users eventually will not be able to locate anything on the site, consistent with the existing experience for current on-site Reddit users. We know that a curated, managed experience is what most reliably leads to happy investors, so rest assured, we will be slowly cutting off all avenues for users to direct their own experience on Reddit. Yay!

As the IPO day nears, remember: when we are finished only the worst content will be available by an audience who can't find us. Our core audience will be the users who remain trapped, Clockwork Orange-style, in an endless cycle of stimulation triggers structured to maximize ad viewing, in order to ensure our investors capture the maximum proportion of the site's rapidly diminishing value. In other words, get ready to maximize ARPU, investors!

With these changes, invest with confidence. With geniuses like us at the helm, you can be sure line goes up.

Reddit commits suicide, more at 11.

I was a reddit user for ages. Reddit search always sucked. Heck, Reddit could barely make their own data available to the users (which is why their user histories are so limited and why the GDPR takeouts take a week). Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, used external search engines.

Do they want to block external searches? Literally enshittify their shit further? Are they willing to hold back progress?

Just today I was thinking of Reddit Gold - back when I actually paid for it, the marketing spin was "you get to test new features before we add them to everyone else!" Literally none of the Gold features I've ever used made to the unwashed masses. I take it back, saving comments did.

So yeah, they will hold back progress. In fact, progress isn't on the cards. It's just regress. AND you can be a premium user and PAY for it.

Whelp with that I guess my leaving Reddit will go from 99% to 100%. Literally the only reason I’ve ever on that site is because I have a Google search result now. It was the last useful thing about it. Google has terrible results now and Reddit search is useless. They only work when together.

From people that don't use Reddit regularly, the only way they have ever heard about it is from Google results. So good luck with unloading a whole clip into your foot guys 🙄

Yeah that’s a bluff. Google searches surely make up a huge portion of their traffic.

Am I the only one that regularly used "search phrase site:reddit.com" on Google? It makes the search engine so much better.

Really bad idea to get rid of this feature.

Does Reddit not realise that their own internal search is so bad most people will search for answers on Reddit via Google. They're gonna shoot themselves hard-core in thd foot pulling that move.

That reminds me. Should make double sure to blank all my comments, just the other day they banned me from another subreddit, seems like some are still re-opening, re-automodding, or whatever.

Weirdly, I read this as “Reddit doesn’t think it needs search engines,” and was confused about seeing everyone discussing Google specifically. That’s a bit stupid to try to block only the one search engine.

I see a lot of the Kagi shills crawling out of the woodwork here. I've been using SearXNG locally to query many free engines at no cost to me.

Sounds like more gross incompetence from the Elon Musk playbook, whom spez idolizes because he's also an incompetent fucking bozo. Oh well, fools and their money and all that.

BFWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Ill get my popcorn, this will be fun

While Reddit is atrocious without Google, Google is my Reddit search engine, given how its algo is gamed. I miss the day when I could get more than 50 pages of results and still found something useful from some really obscure sites. Now it just stops you after a few pages.

💀

Reddit who?

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