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‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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LMAO. The only time I visit Reddit any more is when it dominates the first page of search results. Spez has failed upwards for so long, he thinks he can fly.
IMO this is the best evidence yet that Spez is trying to kill the usefulness of Reddit even if it kills the platform itself in the process. Just like Musk is doing with Twitter. Free and open mass communication were in the process of turning the tide against the ruling class. Don't get me wrong, it's still very early in that process, but I've noticed a lot of things go from "you'll be ridiculed if you question this" to "some people still try to defend it, but the ridicule is going both ways now" over the years.
So he could be incredibly stupid in a different way than I originally thought.
He was probably offered a ticket to a higher financial level. Whether he's stupid or just corrupt will depend on whether that offer is followed through on.
My guess is he was told if he did x, y, and z to Reddit, the IPO would allow him to sell his shares at some number that he really liked.
But I don't think he can just undo the damage he did if they change their mind about buying it at that price when the IPO comes. I don't know if he'd even be able to talk about that without implicating himself in crimes, so it might happen.
That's assuming he's corrupted by the carrot and not the stick.
I think it would be more a plan to make people come to reddit to search for that kind of information. Google is destroyed by seo listicles and non advice that is referral programs.
Reddit has lots of useful data that is from users who just provide the data with no ulterior motive. That is useful to users. Currently they might search and suck in to reddit for the result but that's hard to monetise. So Google gets the benefit. They have crap search and people don't go there to search and users are down.
This is probably a play to try and encourage search on reddit and raise advertising dollars. However, it will likely make reddit less visible, lowering new users and infrequent users, all the while they keep losing existing users.
They are floundering. They have some ideas that aren't terrible on the face of it but execution is awful and hostile to users.
Same here.
Interestingly back when myself & others were moderating subs on Reddit, & we locked the subs during the protests, the majority of PMs us mods would receive were from randoms that found a link via Google or wherever & were trying to view the post. It did make me wonder how often people browse Reddit just because they stumbled into a link via Google or whatever search engine.
I can't see how Reddit would survive without the big search engines, without those random visitors the ad revenue would plummet.