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

Oh please do! Great way to kill your site faster

As much as I'd appeciate a shift away from Reddit elsewhere, I have to admit that Reddit is often among my most helpful Google results. No matter how stupid the recent management decisions are, it grew to a massive knowledge database over the years. Banning it from search engines would have a negative impact on the overall internet experience.
- Because SEO made Google bad and Reddit has a higher chance for a real person's opinion, which is fantastic. Though we don't need Reddit for that, we can fully replace it with Lemmy by now. But there's a not small part of people, who want to keep Lemmy small and unimportant. Just had that conversation yesterday, there's some gatekeeping going on.
- It's everybody's duty to spread information away from a centralised service.
  
  Facts are not subject to copyright.
- This. I often search for results from Reddit.
As soon as the search indexing stops, Reddit will be permanently gone from my radar. Good riddance!

sure it can. since deleting all accounts the only reason I ever visit Reddit these days is because of search. so yeah make sure I never have a reason to come back

Look and see if your accounts were resurrected, they were un-deleting a ton of comments and other user-removed content when everyone first shifted to here.
- i was mostly a lurker but good call. will search while it's an option!
- Note that there isn't really a way to actually delete your content. You gave Reddit an irrevocable license to it.
Same here! I only visit Reddit to see some post I've saw in the search results. By not allowing the pages to be shown in search engines I'm 100% not looking at Reddit at all!
- every site (well not every site obviously) has their place and their time. I remember MySpace but I do not miss it

Hahahahahahahahah

Oh wait, you're serious? Let me laugh harder

Hahahahahahahahaha

So reddit's planning on making both reddit and google useless?

Google search: hyperspecific computer or hobby problem reddit is the only good material I find on the damn site.

lol no it can't

It's really, really, really going to suck to lose that resource when troubleshooting weird hardware and software issues, but that seems inevitable at this point. He really seems to be trying to figure out the stupidest way to kill the utility of the site in the name of profit.

Keep in mind this is the same guy who said that he idolizes the way Musk has been running Twitter. It's a real shame, because reddit is the only place I know to get actual real answers from actual real people for generally difficult or otherwise niche questions. I don't use reddit anymore as a user, but without Google search, reddit is done (given that even ex-users like myself still affix 'reddit' to the end of a search query.) I have no idea what Spez is planning, but it can't be any improvements to his site, because holy shit.
It’s gonna be a real nasty bandaid to pull off but that company shouldn’t have a stranglehold on that information. I hope this move tanks them severely.

ahahhahhah yes lmao do it fuckin losers.

I swear Elon and Spez are in a race to destroy their own platforms.

Spez will probably win that race with how niche Reddit is to begin with compared to Twitter

One of the major things left drawing in views. Get rekt reddit-logo

Reddit is really gonna go full Digg, aren't they?

Digging their own grave, it seems, and it's so deep they can smell the Earth's core in there.
Considering pretty much every sub went back public, and they have seen no drop in users, I'd say no.

https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy

Lemmy is declining.

Okay then what the hell am I going to type in after 80% of my google searches to avoid SEO spam?

Why is reddit regarded so highly this way? It's always been a second rate board to me. Like yeah there's some technical discussion there. Even notable names might post there. But it's the social media version of technical side of the internet. It's generally full of garbage that requires heavy doses of skepticism as bad info often gets visibility. There is no recourse since the nature of reddit engagement is ephemeral. The proverbial concrete sets shortly after the post/comment is made.

I suppose the state off affairs have deteriorated so far that search engines don't even index the internet properly anymore. Actual discussion boards and websites are basically darknet these days. Internet indexes for all intents and purposes don't exist today. Search engines a glorified index links to each others social media platforms. Even then the bulk of results are online shopping spam.

What a mess.

For any topic I actually want to dive into I do not use reddit for anything more than initial discovery. Social media by nature commoditizes content to serve the masses by appealing to the lowest common denominators. The bulk of the content never goes below surface level.

It varies. Reddit is/was the primary forum for a number of projects, and as each sub is community moderated, could be quite rich, even if the whole is "generally full of garbage".

Didn’t spez threaten this last week or something? Seriously, shit or get off the pot. Also, don’t threaten us with a good time.

It's the same article from 5 days ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The Washington Post reported Friday that 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.

“Nothing is changing,” Reddit spokesperson Courtney Geesey-Dorr told The Verge, adding that the Post would soon be correcting its story.

The publication now writes that if Reddit can’t get AI to play ball, the company may block Google and Bing’s search crawlers, which means Reddit posts wouldn’t show up in search results.

“In terms of crawlers, we don’t have anything to share on that topic at the moment,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge, clarifying that the company’s earlier “nothing is changing” comment only applied to logins.

(In my June interview with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, he said that “we’re in talks” with AI companies about the pricing changes.

The Washington Post’s report wasn’t just focused on Reddit — it’s about how more than 535 news organizations have opted to block their content from being scraped by companies like OpenAI to help train products such as ChatGPT.

The original article contains 473 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!