This has been deeply frustrating, but since that’s the whole point, I support this collective inconvenience.
All in all it’s also a testament of how bad internet is now. All the information is concentrated in few sites that, if gone, gets lost.
Also, I find that basically every search result that isn’t reddit is sponsored content.
Search something real specific like “Best aftermarket injector coils for a 2009 Toyota Corolla” and you’re going to get 100% advertisements and listicles for search results, likely written by somebody who doesn’t know shit about cars.
Append “reddit” to that search, and you’ll be led to a post from a car mechanic giving their opinion on the matter. And, well, I do trust a random stranger on the internet more than I do an advertisement.
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
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.
Yes. When everyone enters info on corporate sites, sooner or later they’ll decide to monetize it.
Reddit going evil on charges and showing their colours in the AMA has been a wake up.
Need some bots to start porting all those posts over to Lemmy lol.
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
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.
With federated services, I feel like it’s somewhat important to get to know the admins of the server you use. You don’t have to be best friends, but at least know their name, motivation for running the server, and how it’s funded.
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’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.
That is the main reason why I’ve been blogging on my own website since 2004 https://paradies.jeena.net/weblog/2004/apr/ersteintrag (and switched to English in 2010 https://jeena.net/posts )
Yep. I blog infrequently but I’ve said a few times in my posts, I am writing this article because I need to remember the steps to do this weird niche thing in case something breaks in the future. If it happens to help someone else out, great.
Definitely saw this coming… can’t imagine what will happen if Stack Overflow pulls something similar. All WebDev/DevOps work will halt overnight.
I’ve been trying to put my issues/solutions in a personal blog or wiki, but there’s so much old info out there in sites like Reddit/SO/medium/etc, it’d be a huge loss when it goes away.
Are lemmy instances indexed properly as well? Would it be enough to put “lemmy” into the search
The federated nature of instances unfortunately might nerf the SEO because they’re from different domains. Google wouldn’t value instance_1. com more because the clicks to related_instance_2. com are higher.
I’d imagine if/when the fediverse becomes popular, search engines will account for this.
I thought links between domains helped pagerank score? Mind you, it’s been a while since I learned SEO. A lot of the content, especially the federated stuff, seems to be loaded via javascript. I wonder if that affects what can be indexed.
Theres more to it than that, vut it does help. However, the base issue here I think is that they just don’t crawl the federated space yet.
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
Used chatgpt to rework my resume recently, holy shit that site is a godsend.
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
Google Search has been sucking for quite a long time.
“site:old.reddit.com” was just a temporary fix
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.
kinda think we need a search engine that can index fedirated sites . like lemmy /mastedon /pleroma .etc .etc
searching for help with technical /specific things has become a nightmare .as al the usefull subreddits have gone dark due to the ongoing protest . making google not so helpfull at all to use
100% has this happen today. Wanted and answer, the only answer was on Reddit, and the Google link was busted.
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.
Wait you use reddit posts to inform yourself on things where misinformation is possible? I also was mildy inconvenienced by the blackouts but it was mostly related to programming stuff, where it is very obvious if an answer is wrong. I don’t think I would even consider using reddit as a source for anything factual
We have a huge issue with misinformation and this actually helps resolve it.
I’m not really sure about that. Bad SEO is something that still exists, and with huge sites like Reddit gone, the bad SEO sites become more prominent which is not necessarily the site with actual articles and sources.
Of course the solution to this is not reddit back but stopping SEO and having better curation of sites in search engines somehow.
All the stuff i would use reddit as an actual source for is things where it’s either obvious that the person is wrong or easy to check or think through. Same for lemmy
Yeah I mostly use it for like product reviews/recommendations or like personal help topics. Not stuff where factual information is required
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!)
GOOD!
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
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 noticed this as well, but it also made me reflect on why I even started adding “reddit” to my searches.
It’s kind of crazy how bad most other results are. They are almost universally some kind of sponsored ad or blog content written by the marketing department of some brand. It’s strangely difficult to find the information you are looking for on google these days.
Reddit was a band-aid but the larger issue is more in how search became an outlet for ads. Modern billboards on the information superhighway.
I’m not sure if there’s a proper solution anymore.
