Absolutely hilarious that they think they can remove 3rd party search engines when reddit itself can’t be navigated for shit, especially with their atrocious search feature. Blocking 3rd party search engines just ensures no one will be able to find any specific posts/content.
Literally the only time I’ve gone back to reddit in months is to find an answer for a game-related issue from a search engine query. Forcing a log-in or disabling search engines is just going to ensure less traffic/none from me.
Just like with Twitter, it seems like the reddit team is purposefully tanking their platform. I understand that much of it is for short-sighted payout, but even then, their decisions have been asinine and self-sabotaging.
Seriously.
I literally cannot think of a faster way to throttle reddit to death without physically shutting off the service. It’s like they went from hammering nails into the coffin one by one and just encased the whole thing in cement.
You need constant inflows of new users to services like these. Even if nobody ever chose to scale back their usage or quit, people eventually just die. Netizens are no different.
I think we are all making an assumption here that the Reddit search function isn’t working exactly as intended.
They don’t want you to find want you are looking for immediately and then leave. They want you to be clicking about on the site for an hour. Absorbing ads, inflating statistics
Appending “site:reddit.com” to a Google search has become a popular trick for weeding SEO farms and other attention-seeking websites out of Google results, but if this change goes through, you might not be able to access Reddit from search at all.
Even this article knows.
If this goes through then my reddit usage will officially reach 0, as Google results are how I end up there nowadays anyway.
It just sucks that we’re gonna lose a decade of community knowledge on so many topics. Honestly if I have a question for the internet, whether it’s dealing with bugs on my houseplants or buying water proof walking boots, I always add ‘reddit’ to my Google searches.
Shane there isn’t a way to move it all on to a stackoverflow type site.
I use untrackme on Android to redirect Searx results to RedReader, and to redirect Voyager or Eternity to Stealth. I deleted all my accounts, I will delete those redirects if this happens.
ETA : I can’t find the arstechnica article, but this has been a thing for awhile. Reddit search is garbage, you have always needed an outside search to find anything.
Interesting that
can survive
is now the goal
Do it, /u/spez. I dare you.
The irony is that Reddit thinks their internal search can in any way, shape or form compete with Google or other actual search engines. People use Google to find stuff on Reddit because Reddit’s own search is hopeless.
