Google is getting a lot worse because of subreddits being private (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by IcyPractice@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1271267

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What do you guys think about this? (Wasn't sure which community to post this in)

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[-] CharlesReed@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Not just with subs going private, but with users purging their comments and posts along with their accounts. Just last night I was talking to a friend about something and wanted to pull up a post from a while back. Lo and behold, deleted and gone.

[-] eToThePiIPower@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

One long-term solution would be to ask the relevant question in a relevant community on lemmy every time this happens to you. Then answer it yourself (or wait for other to), perhaps using the other site (via archive.org) as a reference when writing it up.

The important bit is to make sure the answer here is complete and not just a link to outside sources. That way it won't disappear if those other sites go offline.

With enough people doing this we can push lemmy into those search results and build a useful & independent repository of knowledge.

[-] angrylittlekitty@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

all attention to this mess is good imho. also remember chat gpt was trained on reddit data i until fall 2021 so should be able to pull on archived zeitgeist for a quick and dirty answer

[-] Banzai51@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

It's temporary until useful info gets posted elsewhere. Besides, Reddit wasn't the only place for good info.

[-] CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

[removed by mod]

[-] DeriHunter@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

I don't think you understand, we are the ones who are getting fucked. Search results are getting worse and harder for you to find what you need with all the ads, fake news, sponsored sites, ai generated articles, etc.. Google doesn't care if you find high quality results, they will still gett traffic and their money because people won't just stop using it.

[-] Fatalchemist@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Google is already an awful search engine and was most useful only for reddit. Search Engine Optimization killed it.

For example, do you know why every recipe Google shows has a 35 page life story article before the recipe? Because it takes you longer to scroll through the page and find the recipe and see if that's what you want. So Google says oh, this website is good and entertaining and full of so many words! This goes higher up! They don't write the stories because the bloggers care. They write stories because it's the only way to get their website seen on Google.

Meanwhile the website you actually want... The one with a simple recipe and no fluff? Well that's not going to sell itself to the Search Engine Optimization. So it's much further down on the list, several pages down.

The same shitification is happening with every website. Every website is a little bit worse than it has to be simply to optimize it's position on the almighty Google.

When you look for the "top shoes for running" or "best phone of 2023", those are just rushed articles with no research done by people with the sole purpose of pumping out millions of articles just to get some spots on Google.

Google was only good for linking to reddit because reddit could never get their search engine working no matter how many times they tried it.

[-] JojoCoowoo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Google absolutely cares if people can't find quality results. They're not the only game in town at this point there are other alternatives. If people can't find what they're looking for they'll look elsewhere.

If you're not opposed to just moving to another big corporation then Bing is better in most ways than Google. Ecosia will give you the same results as Bing but they plant trees for every search. Duck Duck Go is good too

[-] privacyn@feddit.it 0 points 1 year ago

There good and sometimes better alternatives to Google, you can easily leave without it or use it only when necessary

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

It doesn't solve the issue that the answer you're looking for is on Reddit and isn't accessible anymore...

I mean, good for us for screwing up Reddit, but the transition impacts more than just Reddit itself because subreddits are going private and people are deleting their posts, that's a whole lot of knowledge just disappearing from the internet overnight and that's never a good thing! I don't know how many times I tried to find solutions or answers to tech related questions and the only place I could find an actual answer was on Reddit because it was actual people speaking to each other!

[-] DeriHunter@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Yeah, for the short term. But the long term if lemmy can become the successor. It won't be long until it get will get back to normal

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

It took ten years for Reddit to reach that point, that's a whole lot of info that people probably won't talk about again but that might concern some people, just not as many as when the subject was new.

Example, my soundbar has technical issues when plugged in a certain way and that can be solved through some settings on the TV, the only answer I found was on Reddit on a sub that is now locked down. That soundbar isn't for sale anymore and hasn't been for a couple of years, so now I'm have to troubleshoot the issue by myself if I ever unplug it and if I sell it to someone when I upgrade then they're shit out of luck 🤷

[-] itchy_lizard@feddit.it 0 points 1 year ago

Please post LINKS to Lemmy, not screenshots of headlines. Ffs, even your "source" link goes to an image, not the article

Mods, can we please crack down on this dumb-ification of Lemmy? We're better than tiktok.

this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023

10 points (100.0% liked)

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