Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
With Google’s generally poor search results nowadays, appending “reddit” has long been the default way I search for almost anything (and no, I’m not ready to get my info from an AI chatbot, either). But given the sheer volume of subreddits that are currently unavailable — including some of the most-subscribed subreddits — clicking through many Reddit links in search results takes me to a message saying the subreddit is private. ...
It's not often that I get to point out Internet Monopolies being sharecroppers.
The real dish here is that Reddit was one of the few domains in which the ad-fed #enshittification and #SidamTouch (ad-centric media turns everything to shit, reverse of Midas) wasn't ... overly dominant.
And now courtesy of mismanagement by #spez, #Reddit, #AdvanceMedia, and the Reddit board, #GeneralWebSearch which as been in a death spiral for years is suddenly getting far, far worse.
I've commented multiple times that I rely far more on traditional media (mostly books and magazine articles) these days than the Web. Sites/services such as #SciHub, #LibraryGenesis, and #ZLibrary have been absolutely vital for this, and despite much of the online world getting markedly worse, these are bright spots.
(Internet Archive, Wikipedia / Wikimedia, Project Gutenberg, and a handful of other sites/services are among the other bright spots which happen to operate inside the law, though the fact that useful sites have to violate law says a hell of a lot about how corrupt and societally-failing the law is these days.)
My #ResearchMethods for #ContentDiscovery now are based strongly on library research techniques I'd learned in the 1980s: research topics of interest, find major works and the authors of those works, read those, and if the same names or works keep turning up then find and read those. I'll also make heavy use of podcasts, especially those reviewing books and/or interviewing authors (particularly on academic topics), most notably the #NewBooksNetwork.
This may not lead you to truth, but it will virtually always point you to the foundations of present understanding and orthodoxy.
Truly principled authors will note conflicting / contradictory viewpoints --- #PatrickOphuls is excellent in this regard. Even unprincipled authors will often point out key voices in opposition to them, though usually by trash-talking and belittling them. (I'd found a wonderful example of this in a Reason review on Conway & Oreskes latest book The Big Myth.)
Welp, just overwrote and deleted a 13- and 11-year #reddit account. Many of us put up with the decline in the site because we were able to use 3rd party apps. For me Sync was reddit, and without it there's no way I'll access the site. I don't use my laptop for social media scrolling, and I will not use their intentionally horrible app.
Even if that weren't enough, the declining standards, the admin team, the whole #enshittification of the site... it's clear there's no coming back and Reddit is now in the pile with Digg and Twitter.
Here's to my new home on #kbin. With this, I'm pretty much entirely in the #fediverse for my social media needs.
Sounds like someone with a stake in BlueSky, hyperbole much?
Nobody knows the future and maybe Mastodon won’t take over Twitter and BlueSky (which is fine), but the federation I’m seeing with the ActivityPub protocol (Wordpress, Mozilla, many more) and all the other software forks, I’m quite bullish on the Fediverse itself keeping the internet open for those of us who care about that. We’ll see if that’s a majority of internet users. I think seeing enshittification playing out at Twitter, Reddit, Google, Facebook, Instagram and more makes a case for an open internet better than anything else.
p.s. I know you already know everything I wrote above, just sharing my thoughts as a non-techie who doesn’t run an instance or anything like that, just an ordinary user 😎
I'm ashamed to admit I once participated in an unethical move just like this at a now defunct startup. It remains one of my all-time biggest regrets. I often think about what I did. Boy does it rankle to hear stories like this. Is there any wonder such services end up going down the inevitable path of #enshittification?
I’ve been using fediverse stuff (Mastodon and, most recently, Calckey – I’m just going to use “Mastodon” as shorthand here, purists can bite me) for over a year now, a…
I invested lots of time into Google+ and built up a following of 26,000 there. Then it closed down days before I started my Patreon campaign. Yes, I am still bitter about that.
Then I shifted my attention to Twitter. And then, last year, Elon Musk took it over.
I am done investing effort in corporate-owned social media sites that must inevitably follow the #Enshittification principle. No, Mastodon (and the Fediverse in general) did not absorb as many Twitter users as we hoped. Still, I think in the long run the Fediverse will grow, as corporate social media proves again and again that they cannot be trusted.
I have been using the term #enshittification lately to describe #Reddit downfall, but it's happening to all centralized platforms lately because the era of easy money is coming to an end with interest rates raising. It's a term coined by Cory Doctorow. He describes it as this:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable"consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them. Source
Can the Fediverse be "enshittified." The answer is no as there is no profit motive if you use open source software that uses ActivityPub like Mastodon, Misskey, Akkoma, Calckey, Pixelfed, etc. Servers are run by users or organizations, usually without a profit motive. Most of them receive funding through donations. If one server decides to go to crap or plans to shut down, you can always move to another server. This is why the ActivityPub powered Fediverse can never be enshittified unlike corporate, centralized platforms that are unlikely to turn a profit.
5 and a half years ago EA held an AMA so disastrous that it was unreadable as downvotes pummelling the answering producers and directors to the ground. Back then I made an overview for r/Games....
So I've been shopping around for music streaming. Spotify sucks for many reasons, and their CarPlay interface sucks. Apple Music is nice in a lot of ways, but desktop listening on Windows or Linux sucks.
TIDAL is actually really good. Selection, app quality, everything. They also pay artists a lot more than Apple, which is a LOT LOT more than everybody else. You might want to give them a shot.
They're owned by Square now though, so I'm worried the #enshittification is gonna start any minute.
So, the inner loop of “What the Heck is happening with Reddit?” is this:
They appear to be getting all their ducks in a row to prepare for an IPO, which means shutting down all the 3rd parties that have (in Reddit’s view) been siphoning away advertisement eyeballs.
But
Reddit’s official app has been so garbage for so long for moderating, that many moderators relied on third party apps. For years.
The changes also rugpulled many other community developed anti-abuse efforts.
@yakkoj I'm already pissed that #Rockstar retroactively did #Enshittification to my #GTA4 on #Steam and removed the ability to play that game #offline and without a shitty "Rockstar [Anti-]Social Club" account.
If you know any patch / crack to make it playable offline singleplayer, let me know...
I just downloaded #ApolloApp for the sake of throwing a few bucks in the tip jar to help @christianselig, but I don’t see one. Anyone want to point me in the right direction? #reddit#enshittification
Ugh, I forgot that my stupid Bowflex VeloCore expects me to pay the company to stream media to the giant screen on the front. Like, really? You want me to pay you so I can stream Netflix - that I have to pay for separately - on the Android tablet you bolted onto my exercise bike? #enshittification
I'm trying to move as much of my online activity as possible to the #Fediverse, mostly because the internet sucks now, but also because I'm excited at the idea of users forming communities and sites of resistance on their own terms, free of capitalist meddling and surveillance. #enshittification#redditapi
OC Why did the #TwitterMigration fail? (blog.bloonface.com)
I’ve been using fediverse stuff (Mastodon and, most recently, Calckey – I’m just going to use “Mastodon” as shorthand here, purists can bite me) for over a year now, a…
CEO spez AMA Overview | r/Save3rdPartyApps (old.reddit.com)
5 and a half years ago EA held an AMA so disastrous that it was unreadable as downvotes pummelling the answering producers and directors to the ground. Back then I made an overview for r/Games....