For quite a long time now when troubleshooting tech issues, I've started searches with site:reddit.com. Hopefully indexing on kbin and lemmy is decent enough going forward that they can pick up the slack. Otherwise, you get a lot of results that are either official tech support forums which always respond with basic troubleshooting, or outside forum posts with no real resolution.
I had to stop and think about this carefully, but I realized that I only used Reddit to find technical answers for personal stuff - like dealing with shenanigans in Windows or problems with games. I work as a DevOps engineer, and when I need to find a technical answers for work Reddit is not usually helpful. I think we'll be fine.
There doesn't appear to be robots.txt restrictions. I can get back results by doing a site:kbin.social search or a site:lemmy.ml search.
I think that a bigger issue is that the fediverse systems are designed to span multiple hosts. There's no convenient syntax to ask Google to search all content on a given fediverse platform, because it spans different domains. Reddit content is on reddit.com, so the site: operator is sufficient.
I think if maybe someone just creates a kbin or lemmy mirror site that all it does is collect data from all the instance for google as well as preserving it in the case an instance goes offline would be a great idea
Since this whole recent dumpster fire with reddit started, that's been the one thing I've been loudly complaining about is the potential or realized plans for some subreddits to move to Discord servers. For informational purposes rather than just acting as a chat platform, Discord is a BAD idea. It essentially adds a walled garden to everything. There's zero discovery by design.
This is the only part of the blackout that has stung for me. I can't find any meaningful conversations or posts on Google when I'm trying to compare products. It's just a bunch of random blogs praising products so you will click their affiliate link. Ran into this earlier when I was trying to compare remote desktop apps.
exactly this. none of the other reviews are trustworthy... like why would i trust a NYT article on the best dry herb vapes to get, they just want to make money off clicking their links. and the worst offenders are all those ranking of different "top 10" lists where each is its own page, so that you'll get 10 sets of ads lmao
That's exactly why the first thing I did when I got here was create m/dryherbvapes because there's no way to get real advice from real enthusiasts anymore.
@Phobos this is why I don't like when people mentions that they are deleting and scraping their accounts... Even though I completely understand and support them, but Reddit was such a good place to find good answer... And everything will be lost
I haven't scrapped my post history just yet, but I intend to. I figured if I had posted anything useful (99.9% of it is just comments like this), wouldn't it remain accessible in an archive site that doesn't feed into Reddit's traffic?
Gotta say that RustDesk (nightly) is my new fav. Got locked out from AnyDesk after helping too many people on discord and now run my own instance for my private stuff. My only wish is that it can let me connect to people outside of my instance without removing the server address every time.
I've been using Splashtop for a while. The consumer tier is pretty affordable and the professional is very reasonable. TeamViewer bends you over a barrel on price, but you can use it personally for free. Trouble is, if you use it a lot for free, you'll find yourself banned.
I agree. Looking for TTRPG related stuff, about the only place that has meaningful conversation is reddit, and most (all?) of those threads are locked. While I agree with the reasoning behind it, it does make it more annoying to find information.
IMO, if they continue blackouts regularly, I'd rather they locked comments & new posts, rather than the entire subreddit. Google cache/wayback machine are fine, but certainly more work to use.
I get where you’re coming from, but on the flip-side all this disruption means the blackout campaign is working. Reddit thinks they can just ride this out, but right now their reputation is being eviscerated - not just among us Redditors, but with other companies like Google, and the general public that is being directed there only to find themselves locked out.
All of these things dramatically increase the pressure on Reddit… and the longer it goes, the greater the pressure. At some point, the board will force spez to capitulate or replace him due to the damage his poor monetization strategies have caused to the company’s reputation and value… but only if we all hold the line and keep the subs dark.
That said, it’s pretty nice here, so I plan on staying either way.
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.
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
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
Agree, but I think that's the point: this is the proof we have to switch to a different model. It will take time to replace Reddit as the huge information source it was (and to a certain extent still is), but I'm willing to hope it can happen.
Not trying to be hostile, but you just went on about how useful reddit is, but you also hope it dies? I just don't understand why people support these long blackouts while admitting it won't make reddit change it's mind.
Not OP but I think this type of information is not something a for-profit company should be able to hold against everyone on the Internet. At this point I think reddit has to 'die' in order for a better, more open standard to take its place. Even if they do cave to the demands they have shown that they are willing to sacrifice the platform and usability for more profits, so there is no knowing what they will do in the future. It's a great loss, but I would rather get it over with now so there is solid foundation to build on and this doesn't happen again.
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.
Agreed. But it's a nice reminder that these huge companies that get money by renting out our eyeballs actually provide very little content - just the platform we happen to be stuck with for the time being.
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!)
But how would this work with broader federation? Searching other instances like beehaw or kbin? We'll needan new search optimization to search the fediverse more efficiently.
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've said it numerous times over the years, the Internet has been centralizing rapidly and it benefits none of us.
In 2005 you'd wander around, going from peoples' personal pages to forums to whatever else people linked. In 2015 half of those websites were dead because everyone got their content on reddit anyway.
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".
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.
These are certainly possibilities! It's happened elsewhere in the Fediverse... but already we can export most of our data and migrate to a different instance. Getting these base features right is important before enhancing their functionality. Planning for the future is important too. So far I've been impressed by Lemmy, though it's not nearly as portable as Mastodon or Calckey or Pleroma etc. Part of that is that in Lemmy/kbin we don't follow other users... we subscribe to groups (subs/communities/magazines).
Still, with the nature of ActivityPub, it's inevitable that migration tools for Reddit-like federated apps will get built quick-like
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.
Completely what I'm saying, but to add on it is not just forums. With the new web, I've hit a deadend on many OEM websites as well, and part websites, and others. I'm sure cell phone and computer information is similar, in fact after trying to research a power supply for my old prebuilt I know it's a fight.
If we have communities sync'ed on multiple instances we can solve that. At first this was my presumption for how the federation works, but I then learned /c/Pennsylvania on one instance is helpful local news and on another its right-wing propaganda.
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.
we can still easily fall into this trap if there isn't a good way to migrate communities between instances. And even if we could just take /c/technology@beehaw.org and move the whole thing to /c/technology@feddit.de or something, that would still break all the indexers' links
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.
google has been bad for a long, long time. It's no wonder its not functional without reddit. Should be a lesson for all the big companies to not bury communities.
Bing ironically, with it’s new AI interface, is actually rather good now. Still don’t use it though unless I really must, some habits are hard to break.
I agree. For this reason I started branching out to other search engines. My favourite is Kagi. It’s superior to Google in every way, but it requires a subscription. Bing is surprisingly good now, depending on the content. Neeva is an excellent alternative to Google. Yandex for those who would like to avoid American censorship.
That's also what I love. Their focus is on delivering the best quality results, as opposed to delivering the results which pay Google the most.
I also really love that you can block or down-rank domains. Google is RIFE with low quality domains serving terrible results, and they don't offer any way to eliminate them.
Having to add "reddit" to search terms was a sign of a problem in my opinion.
Either the search was broken because non-reddit results were trash 8/10 times or straight forward quality answers just weren't a thing elsewhere. So much spammy articles or long winded articles without that reddit filter. Questionable reviews for products or recommendations too. And that is without considering chatgbt fueled spam.
oh god searching for something like "windows random bluescreen" is filled with stupid results. Reddit was the only source for good information with people asking questions with similar terms
Yeah, thought of that, but while I did do a quick attempt prior to my comment, and while I could get cached copies of some pages in the Reddit domain, for whatever reason, my attempts to pull up random comments didn't seem to have Google having cached copies for those pages. Not sure what determines whether Google has a cached copy or not.
Oh, and IIRC there's a a browser plugin.
goes looking
Yeah, official browser plugin for Firefox and for Chrome for the Wayback Machine, so if one is doing this a lot, one can slightly reduce the time to bounce through the archive.org site.
For many people google (or whatever engine) was just a gateway to get informations on reddit. With all those sub reddits down at the moment, a lot of searches are really hard to get informations, because like it, or not, reddit is a big part of getting informations or opinions etc.
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.
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
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.
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
I work as a game developer and a programmer. There are a lot of possibility for people to be wrong. Specially when it comes to design or usage. A lot of misinformation in programming is like yeah this answer technically since this specific case but when you scale it, it breaks entirely. Like https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/stealth-based-mechanics/6992/6 is a great example where yeah a trace will work, your data will be inaccurate a bit, you won't be able to scale it and it won't work with a lot of edge case lighting. The better solution is to use a grey colored mesh and a scene capture to get information consistently about both the baked and dynamic lighting. You might even have a better way though like getting the data from lumen or shadow maps.
So even with things you think won't have misinformation, you get misinformation and people guessing while presenting they are right.
Makes me want to go back and edit my posts to f*** /u/spez because I don't want them getting traffic off of my content. But also don't want that entire collection of human data gone if everyone did the same.
Too bad we can't all export and reconstruct our conversations here somehow.
My posts are 99% shitposts anyway, so it doesn't really matter, nothing constructive to mankind.
Use a tool to edit all your comments to a Lorem ipsum, the more useless data they have filling their database the better, I prefer this to simply deleting them all and freeing up their database storage.
Btw, I don't know any tool for that, but I guess there should be some because I saw some users editing all their comments.
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.
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