Google executives acknowledged this month they need to do a better job surfacing user-generated content after the recent Reddit blackouts.
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The reddit thing was even described as a “hack” to google search iirc
The Internet has been slowly getting gutted since at least 2015.
It is to the point that a regular search engine is useless for actual research unless you are a power user and even then it is censored.
It’s called enshittification for a reason.
What does the “en” prefix accomplish in that word?
I instinctively scroll down 1-2 screens now to get past all the ads and promoted pages. It’s like Amazon the few times I use that. Fully enshittified. I just use Bing most of the time which isn’t any better.
I started using Swisscows about a year ago and I’m never going back. Clean, simple, uncluttered. No trackers or “personalization”.
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No true crime and no tiddies? Is there even anything on that search engine?
It’s not all Google’s fault though. With the obliteration of online news and forums, there just isn’t much indexable content out there that isn’t trash. It’s only getting worse with AI spitting out garbage remixes of the same crap on pages that post more ads than content. Reddit was a bastion of real content written by real humans delivered in a mostly friendly way.
So at this point, what is Google supposed to even serve? No one wants the trash content. The next “best” thing is Quora and that’s entirely hostile even if it manages to accidentally contain valid content.
Corporate has managed to destroy the Internet.
So at this point, what is Google supposed to even serve?
Google has the entire Deja News (Usenet) archive, more valuable than Reddit except for the older age. And they don’t let you access it anymore.
What are they doing with it?
Google is doing nothing with their Usenet archive. Hopefully they haven’t destroyed it.
I just checked the perspectives tab, since I’m on mobile. I guess Google wants people to be less reliant on Reddit, but it’s like… User-generated content on Reddit vs. Twitter/Tiktok/Youtube are not the same? Usually I put “reddit” in the search bc I want a quick and well-informed text-based answer to something. That’s still going to be the easiest thing to do.
There are some high quality forms out there. G really needs to hook into these forums and the fediverse if they need to replace the reddit content.
It’s shocking to see how bad they’ve become at what used to be their core function. I mean their brand name became the verb for looking something up on the internet. Now it just returns a useless mix of advertising, blogspam, AI spam, and sometimes-useful reddit results.
I’m also not quite happy with the search experience due to them constantly moving UI components around randomly. First they started shuffling around the order of the search tabs (All, Images, Videos, Shopping, News) erratically, and now they’ve also decided to also start including what they believe may be related search terms there as well, sometimes.
"Another employee question in the companywide meeting asked if Google can more easily surface “authentic discussion” since the “Reddit blackout” was making it harder to find such content.
CEO Sundar Pichai chimed in to to say that users don’t want “blue links” as much as they want “more comprehensive answers.”
No I’m pretty sure people really are looking for authentic discussion, twisting that to say that we want more comprehensive answers is clearly Pichai trying to make the situation fit what he already wants to do: implement generative AI in response to searches to keep people on the site.
To get a genuine opinion on “what is the best [whatever]” is an impossibility now with result after result of Amazon affiliate lists of utter garbage.
Try to compare 2 pieces of computer hardware and be faced with results from UserShitMark or other affiliate laden shitbags.
Google Search is ruined with all the inorganic shit it gravitates to.
That was probably the only good thing reddid offered, google searches.
Whenever I had a tech related issue I added reddit at the end and I knew I’ll find the solution instead of going through MS and other official sites who for some reason had the thread as solved but no solution to be found.Google would probably like to take over the user generated content somehow. If people can find it on Google even when it is not available on Reddit then it is pure profit for Google. They already provide a lot of information on their search pages bypassing the sources. Google is not our friend. Not any more.
