There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

ilickfrogs ,
@ilickfrogs@lemmy.world avatar

Can someone point out what kind of actual benefit reddits stands to gain from this? Although there are many, many, MANY things they’ve done in the past that are unpopular, I’ve been able to understand why they did it even though it sucked for end users. This one just seems dumb though. Since their shitty API changes 99.9% of my reddit traffic is from search sending me there. Hell there’s people that have only used reddit as a search resource and nothing more.

Nintendo ,

did you even click the link? it says the point literally in the first sentence… lol they don’t want Google training their AI search results with their data and making less incentive to actually click into reddit

Copernican ,

I think it’s the realization the the community content is valuable, specifically to generative AI companies. Big tech companies with AI ambitions are extracting that value for free. I think reddit is somewhat justified in wanting to prevent that from happening to try to capture that value they have as being the forum for all of this content. My guess is there the same pipe that feeds search is also the same pipe that feeds generative AI tech.

ollie ,

fuck this bruh. google search is worthless and adding reddit to a search query was the only way to make it bearable…

anyone know any good alternatives? maybe some search catalogue with multiple sources including a reddit scrape?

ComradeKhoumrag ,
@ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub avatar

Honestly sometimes duck duck go gives me better results

flerp ,

I use duck as my first choice, but unless I’m just looking up one word, it doesn’t find much useful. If I look for a specific question, duck doesn’t work at all and I have to go back to google. google is way worse than it used to be, but it’s still better than any other I have found yet.

ComradeKhoumrag ,
@ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub avatar

I guess the times duckduckgo works better for me is when I’m looking for answers Google is able to identify, but chooses to filter out, like in psychedelic trip reports

lud ,

I very rarely go back to google but at least it’s very easy to do with bangs “!g [search Query]”

spudwart ,

I use a search aggregator, searxng.

chilicheeselies ,

The only thing google search is good for anynore is recipies. Thebonly good product they make anymore is maps.

Duckduckgo isnt much better.

Paradox ,
@Paradox@lemdro.id avatar

Even their recipe search is abysmal

Look up something like schnitzel and you’ll have 7 paragraphs of AI slop, telling you about the author, the history of the dish, the weather, a new cookbook for sale, before you get to the actual recipe

LoKout ,

kagi.com

It’s not free, but not expensive. You are not the product. They have catalog-like search and curated results.

A2PKXG ,
@A2PKXG@feddit.de avatar

catalog-like search what’s that?

LoKout ,

It allows you to search a collection of sources for information. Maybe you want to search a group of 20 tech blogs that you trust, just as one example.

Before Google, this was a common technique used by search engines to direct users to trusted content sources.

Paradox ,
@Paradox@lemdro.id avatar

Kagi is goat.

My favorite feature is their universal summarizer. It can even do videos and podcasts

MadBigote ,

I just learned last month about Kagi and I’m never going back to Google.

Gruntyfish ,

I am really liking Kagi.

Karyoplasma ,

ChatGPT, define “delusion of grandeur” for me!

notafox ,
@notafox@lemmy.world avatar

Sure xD

sturmblast ,

they’re really trying to kill Reddit aren’t they

yoz ,

Unfortunately reddit , twitter etc will never die. There will always be a subset that will keep using the platform no matter what. The only thing that can kill it is when company starts making huge loss without any user base but that’s a slow death until the said subset stops using it.

OhmsLawn ,

Yeah, however small the user base, they still have value. Even in a worst-case—Chapter 7—situation, somebody would buy the names and logos.

Die4Ever ,
@Die4Ever@programming.dev avatar

Even in a worst-case—Chapter 7—situation, somebody would buy the names and logos.

imagine this happens and then the Reddit codebase turns out to be too much work to maintain so it just becomes a Lemmy/Kbin/similar instance lol

spudwart ,

They don’t need to die, they just need to become irrelevant and for the fediverse to take over.

themarty27 ,

Alternatively they could get bought by Google and be sunsetted within six months because the devs got bored.

drislands ,

My theory is that reddit just doesn’t make enough money to stay open without external funding, and as they started running out of that they desperately hired anyone they thought could make the company enough money to stay afloat.

And the dumbass ideas we keep seeing from them are the result of that. Anything to get a buck, no matter what it means to the user experience.

Kyle_The_G ,

I think its about their plan to go public and some hedge fund bros told them if they want a sugar daddy then they have to implement more agressive ads and subscription fees to juice valuation. I hope it massively backfires.

oxideseven ,

They have is ways to socialize online (reddit, Twitter, fb) and then people realized they could use them as a tool for good. They could organize, spread the word about bad companies and people, encourage others to do good, and so on. People could even turn on the platforms when those platforms corrupted.

So yeah, the billionaires in control don’t like it that we have ready ways to call them out. Elon was pissed about people tracking their flights on Twitter and bought the platform and it’s running it into the ground. Why not. He loses nothing and gains everything.

I think we’ll see this happen a lot more. Billionaires control everything and then we act surprised when they shut people out that expose them.

Che_Donkey ,
@Che_Donkey@lemmy.ml avatar

Paired up with Governments around the world realizing “oh shit, the masses can easily organize and turn against us”… Here Elon, buy this platform and toast it, we’ll make sure you’re compensated, bro.

KinglyWeevil ,

I don’t think that’s what happened, with Twitter at least.

Elon pissed off the wrong people at the SEC and FTC playing stupid pump and dump games with stocks by using Twitter and his absurdly undeserved reputation as an unconventional super genius with his mega group of followers.

One of the biggest of these, was pumping and then dumping twitter stock by alleging that he’d buy the company. And the people he’d pissed off in government basically saw their opportunity to fuck him by literally forcing him to buy it at his stupidly overpriced valuation - that’s why he played all sorts of dumb games dragging out the purchase and trying to get out of it.

And so now he’s stuck with an unprofitable company he didn’t want. I’m pretty sure he’s running it into the ground on purpose so he’ll be able to carry that loss balance forward eternally, using it to get out of paying taxes by writing off the loss.

BigDanishGuy ,

I just had to check, reddit isn’t publicly traded yet. My best explanation was that spez had a strawman short 200x the amount of reddit stocks and then run the site so hard into the ground that even Musk would go whoa and Malagassy geophysicists would be getting strange readings on their seismographs.

Now? No, they’re not actively trying to kill reddit. It’s the classic case of someone who got lucky with a startup and didn’t hand it off before crashing it.

Soggy ,

He did hand it off. Then he clawed his way back in amid the Ellen Pao stuff and it’s generally been going downhill the whole time.

Paradox ,
@Paradox@lemdro.id avatar

They should have IPOd in 2020, like everyone else did, but they didn’t. Why is anyone’s guess. Greed, skeletons in the closet, or whatever, doesn’t really matter, they missed the boat

TheBlue22 ,

OK, well, this is simply suicidal for the site. What positives would this even bring? And even if it would, can the dumbasses who lead reddit not see how it would annihilate the site?

coffee_poops ,

No

Flaky ,
@Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

The original headline had Reddit “flatly deny” claims they were walling off their site to those who weren’t logged in. Lmao, the company lied about the API and lied about Christian (Apollo’s dev), of course they’re going to lie about whether they’ll wall off their site. Especially since the CEO is influenced by Elon who has walled Twitter off.

moonleay ,

How do they expect to survive without serach, if they can’t even profit with search?

ElBarto ,
@ElBarto@sh.itjust.works avatar

Are spez and Musk having a race or something?

some_guy ,

Of they were, both sites would be gone by now. I could tank a huge site in a week. This is just incompetence.

Lonnie is a dumbass business man. Spez has no sense of (or doesn’t care) what users want. That’s what’s happening.

Fuck these unimportant men with more power than they deserve.

Karyoplasma ,

That’s what happens if narcissist billionaires get lauded by the media. Copycats are glory hounds and want their share of brown-nosing as well.

axemurber ,

Literally the only time I ever use reddit is if it is a google result(stopped after 3rd party ban).

brsrklf ,

That’s what I was going to say. Nowadays I only end up on Reddit when a search points there, and only when all other options have led nowhere.

Every time the Reddit browser experience is there to remind me why this is the last place I check.

LillyPip ,

Same here, and also only if the answer is important to me. If it doesn’t really matter whether I learn the answer, I’ll just move on. This could decimate their casual educational value, which used to be their greatest asset.

They either have a revenue stream more valuable than that or this is a comically stupid thing to do.

QuarterSwede ,
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

If on iOS you can use the free Sink it for Reddit Safari extension to remove all of the use the app garbage and make the mobile site useful. They make an extension for Twitter/X as well.

For the times I can only get an answer there it makes it decent.

lorez ,

And on desktop with ublock so I give em no views.

margaritox ,

Yea, me too. I kinda wanna learn to stop doing that. It’s just, a lot of the times, that’s the only place where an answer is available.

shneancy ,

yup, especially obscure tech problems, or tech problems that started happening today because of an update (looking at you discord).

I will forever remember the time when I spent a week talking with a dipshit miscrosoft support guy who insisted my entire brand new drawing tablet was broken, despite me telling him the problem was most likely in my laptop or windows itself and after giving up on that guy I went to reddit and had my issue diagnosed and solved in like 3 comments flat

Renacles ,

I thought the 3rd party app ban was bad but this is pure self destruction.

JackbyDev ,

The best marketing they have is “I add Reddit to anything I search on Google!” This truly is 🤡 shit.

QuarterSwede ,
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, could help Lemmy out. I’d be super okay with that.

jasory ,

Probably not. The majority of users are just there for entertainment and commentary, they aren’t the same niche that occupies Lemmy communities.

h_a_r_u_k_i ,
@h_a_r_u_k_i@programming.dev avatar

So Reddit would go from a social open hub, the “front page of the Internet”, to a walled garden? Ridiculous.

MonkderZweite , (edited )

They threaten to saw the branch they sit on.

Btw, greed and jealousy are cancers that eat the brain.

DragonTypeWyvern ,

I literally only go to Reddit for videogame questions. I know most normal people only head there when they have specific questions.

You know, the people they can actually show ads to?

Darkhoof ,
@Darkhoof@lemmy.world avatar

The moment they do this Reddit will collapse.

Hogger85b ,

Very much doubt it but they will lose a lot of causal trade page hits. A lot of finding solutions to things is why I end up.on Reddit now as it only useful result in Google.

But the vast amount of people using it as social.media will stay

nicetriangle ,

It won't just be this but it'll be things like this, further monetization schemes, and eventually killing old.reddit that are gonna keep chipping away at their faithful userbase.

2xsaiko ,
@2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I’m surprised they haven’t killed old reddit after all this other BS yet, tbh.

Hubi ,

That’s because all the admins are using old.reddit themselves.

pahlimur ,

They can see the numbers for new shit reddit and old reddit. They haven’t gotten rid of it because it probably still has a ton of traffic that can display ads. It’s extremely obvious that they fucked up with the new design just because the old one has been around for so long

nucleative ,

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?

ComradeBunnie ,
@ComradeBunnie@aussie.zone avatar

Good ol’ Spiderface Spez.

Eww, Spez.

AMillionNames ,

When a company does this, they aren’t just making a business decision, they are making a decision for the people who use their platforms, who got to their platform from Google searches and who made content that other people see in Google searches. Abuse is abuse, and even in the US this should be grounds for the loss of fair use. The EFF should realize Reddit is not their friend.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •