Submitted 1 year ago by AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/20/23925504/reddit-deny-force-log-in-see-posts-ai-companies-deals
The fact that Reddit thinks all that user-generated content is theirs and that they need to protect it from AI is really fucked up.
Reddit itself produces nothing, they wouldn’t exist without the users.
Absolutely pathetic that they may block search crawlers over that.
Typical corporate greed in that sense. It’s stupid but I’m not at all surprised by that attitude.
The part that even if they were morally right in that sense… it’s already too late. This is trying to close the barn door not just after the horse left, but after the horse already ran off and made it two states over. There’s definitely value to LLM in having more data and more up to date data, but reddit is far from the only source and I cannot imagine that they possess enough value there to have any serious leverage.
Reddit would/will survive being taken out of internet search results. Not without costs though: it will arrest their growth rate (or accelerate shrink rate, as appropriate) and make people less interested in using the site.
That search is the only reason a lot of people end up on reddit. This won’t end well for reddit.
That’s Steve emulating Elon again though, he’s trying to wreck other people’s toys because they’re brats.
I have a feeling this is why they’ll 180 the decision if they tried. Probably wouldn’t even last a month. And that’s being generous.
It’s a catch 22.
Want search engines to see your data to serve it to users looking for your content? Needs to be open.
Want to stop businesses from “profiting” from viewing your data? gotta block all access.
You literally can’t have it both ways. This is a binary choice. People are going to “steal” the data anyway, not that reddit should own ANYTHING posted by users, ever.
Yeah, I’m really hoping they go ahead with it for that reason.
Lol
Literally the only time I use reddit now that my 3rd party app got fucked by spez is when I Google a problem and reddit pops up as the answer.
Will I ever go to reddit and search for my issue? Hell no because their search function is absolutely useless.
I don’t even use Reddit for that anymore. If I’ve got a problem there’s plenty of forums I can consult for help, or I can post the question here on Lemmy, on the fediverse, on Bluesky, you get the idea.
I managed to get Windows XP working with GPU passthrough thanks to a forum MattKC (tech youtuber who does repairs and reverse engineering) had set up and posted non.
Yea, me too. Although I know wanna stop doing that as well.
It’s just me or reddit is copying everything Twitter is doing? Elon Musk did this and rolled it back as soon as it was obvious it was a bad idea.
Spez expressed in interviews that he views Musk’s rampage with twitter as a positive example, so no surprises there
I’m at a loss for words. Surely, YouTube trying to Adwall would be the stupidest thing in social media history. Surely, Musk changing Twitter’s name would be the stupidest thing. No, Steve Huffman has somehow managed to surpass the old masters. “We can survive without people being able to find our website VIA SEARCH RESULTS”! YOU. STUPID. MOTHERFUCKER.
The YouTube ad-blocker ban isn’t stupid at all.
Something isn’t a bad business decision just because you don’t like it. That’s now how business works.
“I won’t watch videos at all if I can’t view them without watching ads or paying money.”
…Yeah. That’s the idea. From a business perspective people who don’t pay or view ads are leeches they’re perfectly happy to burn off.
But but everything on the internet should be free! ~/s~
If you view people as purely as receptacles then this business move is logical, but if you view people as agents that can build their own alternatives or advertise your services then this would seem to be a dumb business move.
YouTube is perfectly happy if people who block ads go away. Do you really think your traffic is beneficial to them if you don’t watch ads?
I mean, I hate it too, but it’s obviously not a bad business decision.
Someone that youtube blocks now is a customer for youtubes now/eventual competitor. You might say they’re low quality since they won’t pay or view ads, but they still share and maybe upload content.
They threaten to saw the branch they sit on.
The moment they do this Reddit will collapse.
Very much doubt it but they will lose a lot of causal trade page hits. A lot of finding solutions to things is why I end up.on Reddit now as it only useful result in Google.
It won't just be this but it'll be things like this, further monetization schemes, and eventually killing old.reddit that are gonna keep chipping away at their faithful userbase.
I literally only go to Reddit for videogame questions. I know most normal people only head there when they have specific questions.
You know, the people they can actually show ads to?
Jesus fucking christ. Why are they hell bent on destroying themselves.
The fact that Reddit is available from a search engine is one of the main reasons for its popularity imo.
Exactly, Google search itself is so enshittified you pretty much have to tag “reddit” at the end of every query to find any solution to a problem. Even my 55yr boss knows this and he’s clueless about anything social media related.
Having tons of Google traffic to any company in would be a godsend, yet Reddit wants to ban it. What a fucking joke.
Reddit’s search can’t be enshitified because it’s never been good.
Spez is an arrogant prick.
Literally the only time I ever use reddit is if it is a google result(stopped after 3rd party ban).
That’s what I was going to say. Nowadays I only end up on Reddit when a search points there, and only when all other options have led nowhere.
Every time the Reddit browser experience is there to remind me why this is the last place I check.
Same here, and also only if the answer is important to me. If it doesn’t really matter whether I learn the answer, I’ll just move on. This could decimate their casual educational value, which used to be their greatest asset.
They either have a revenue stream more valuable than that or this is a comically stupid thing to do.
If on iOS you can use the free Sink it for Reddit Safari extension to remove all of the use the app garbage and make the mobile site useful. They make an extension for Twitter/X as well.
And on desktop with ublock so I give em no views.
Yea, me too. I kinda wanna learn to stop doing that. It’s just, a lot of the times, that’s the only place where an answer is available.
I thought the 3rd party app ban was bad but this is pure self destruction.
The best marketing they have is “I add Reddit to anything I search on Google!” This truly is 🤡 shit.
I mean, could help Lemmy out. I’d be super okay with that.
Probably not. The majority of users are just there for entertainment and commentary, they aren’t the same niche that occupies Lemmy communities.
Are spez and Musk having a race or something?
Of they were, both sites would be gone by now. I could tank a huge site in a week. This is just incompetence.
Lonnie is a dumbass business man. Spez has no sense of (or doesn’t care) what users want. That’s what’s happening.
Fuck these unimportant men with more power than they deserve.
That’s what happens if narcissist billionaires get lauded by the media. Copycats are glory hounds and want their share of brown-nosing as well.
Isn’t this an act of cutting off your face to spite your nose? I understand that Reddit wants to monetize it’s for AI models. But if the content gets moved into a walled garden, and reddit’s own search features don’t improve dramatically, then what’s the point of going to Reddit?
Good ol’ Spiderface Spez.
they’re really trying to kill Reddit aren’t they
My theory is that reddit just doesn’t make enough money to stay open without external funding, and as they started running out of that they desperately hired anyone they thought could make the company enough money to stay afloat.
And the dumbass ideas we keep seeing from them are the result of that. Anything to get a buck, no matter what it means to the user experience.
I think its about their plan to go public and some hedge fund bros told them if they want a sugar daddy then they have to implement more agressive ads and subscription fees to juice valuation. I hope it massively backfires.
They have is ways to socialize online (reddit, Twitter, fb) and then people realized they could use them as a tool for good. They could organize, spread the word about bad companies and people, encourage others to do good, and so on. People could even turn on the platforms when those platforms corrupted.
So yeah, the billionaires in control don’t like it that we have ready ways to call them out. Elon was pissed about people tracking their flights on Twitter and bought the platform and it’s running it into the ground. Why not. He loses nothing and gains everything.
I think we’ll see this happen a lot more. Billionaires control everything and then we act surprised when they shut people out that expose them.
Look they’ve already cut off free API access. Here’s some other ideas from Muskrat playbook:
Maybe change the name to P.com
Change the logo to ₱
The Mexicans won’t mind that you’re using the Peso symbol.
Hmm, why not also charge money to get a blue checkmark by your Reddit username to be a verified Redditor? P-er?
Oh, how about charging new users $1 to use your platform?
So Reddit would go from a social open hub, the “front page of the Internet”, to a walled garden? Ridiculous.
Idk if it’s possible, but if someone with the resources to make a bot that slowly clone reddit posts to Lemmy, so instead of searching for “something + Reddit” we could search for “something + Lemmy”, that would be the end of Reddit, at least for me.
I’m 100% on lemmy now, but occasionally when i need to troubleshoot my PC I still have to search on Google for Reddit posts and I hate myself for giving reddit traffic.
Alright y’all, this is the moment.
Time to go to all those Lemmy Communities about tech support and coding questions, and ask away/ give answers.
GO GO GO!!!
This is the opportunity of a lifetime!
are all these execs on crack ?
This would be the literal death for my reddit Account. Only been using it when looking for answers online and stumbling upon reddit threads.
I could understand if Reddit’s own search was somewhat competent, but it remains terrible.
Lemmy’s search is far more flexible, it’s just buggy/broken right now – at least for me.
Lmao my brother in christ, nobody uses Reddit search because Reddit search is complete ass
“The more you tighten your grasp, the more systems will slip through your fingers.”
Literally the one reason I still use Reddit is because appending site:reddit.com gives me actual results. Reddits’ built-in search results are utter dog shit and you cant find anything. They’d just be shooting themselves in the foot for blocking Google
Reddit is only good for solutions though search results but do it anyway. Make it worse and worse until people start looking for alternatives.
Damn still angry about that API?
It’s funny seeing the corpos implode because they had record growth, which means nothing can match it in the coming quarters and therefore they’re going to have to find someway to meet their stupid investor demands.
The only exemption is Twitter, which is just imploding because Elon is a dumbass and not because of greed.
The original headline had Reddit “flatly deny” claims they were walling off their site to those who weren’t logged in. Lmao, the company lied about the API and lied about Christian (Apollo’s dev), of course they’re going to lie about whether they’ll wall off their site. Especially since the CEO is influenced by Elon who has walled Twitter off.
Reddit is the current best thing that shows up in Google searches try looking up how to convert a dvd to mp4 you’ve got so much shite to shift thought before you get to a result that isn’t just some company trying to sell their over priced shire
do Reddit admins think they have any kind of search function without using Google and site:reddit.com?
Yet another stupid idea from Reddit.
How do they expect to survive without serach, if they can’t even turn a profit with search?
just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Uhhhhh…who thought that was going to be a bright idea? Google is probably the single biggest traffic draw for Reddit.
db2@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Especially since reddit search itself has always been laughably broken.
AbidanYre@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s what I thought this was about halfway through the headline.
“They’ve made it this long without a functional search.”
billwashere@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Did Elon secretly buy Reddit?
hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Funny thing, spez expressed in interviews that he liked Leon’s philosophy behind a lot of decision over Twitter.
So there’s a lot of truth to that
db2@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
No, Steve just has no personality of his own so he mimics other people to fake it. He’s latched on to Elon that way.
EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s literally been life for me for so long when I’m looking up quite a bit of different things. “Blah blah reddit”
gullible@kbin.social 1 year ago
They seem to intend to make the content on Reddit more disposable, which is a feat unto itself. Technical forum usage will precipitously drop if no one can find it. Or they just endlessly repost it? What an odd decision.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Not to mention the only way to go back and find something on their site. Their in house search bar is a useless piece of junk. Back when I would use reddit, I would open up google if I had to find something in reddit.
BassTurd@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If they cut Google, I will literally never go to Reddit again. I probably hit a couple pages a week from Google search, and that’s it, but that will be zero pages if they are truly this dumb.
ubermeisters@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They want the data all to themselves because they think it’s AI training gold
Shyfer@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
Tbh it probably is. I don’t use Reddit much anymore for discussion or news or memes, but when I need the answer to a problem or an opinion on a product or service from actual people instead of an overly long review listicle, Reddit search results are still very useful.
saltesc@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Looks like it’s back to game forums. ChatGPT has alslo mostly overtaken Stack Overflow for me. Reddit was just a nice to have additional source.
PixxlMan@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Spez is going full Musk. It’s actually insane. Like… Holy shit.
I’m praying for Reddit’s downfall here, because if companies are able to get away with this shit the internet is going to get oh so much worse in the near future.
CoderKat@lemm.ee 1 year ago
But at the same time, it sucks. I still use Reddit for episode discussions of shows I watch (which don’t exist here on Lemmy, especially for older shows). I don’t want those to go away without some replacement. Even if Lemmy did suddenly start getting lots of active episode discussions, it’s not really possible to backfill them for older shows and the site is still too small and hard to index, it seems.
Incidentally, google is the only way I access those, since I no longer browse Reddit normally.