The non-profit form of reddit would be what it replaced, surely? Where instead of one big centralised website, you have a thousand different forums all hosted by different websites, focussing on their own thing. Perhaps I’m just nostalgic for the internet pre 2007 or so, when everything started to be herded into the same few mega-sites.
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If I want to restrict my search to reddit results on google, I can just go to reddit and search there.
The problem as mentioned elsewhere in this topic is that Reddit’s own search is notoriously awful.
Besides, if you don’t have a use for site:reddit.com as a search hint, don’t begrudge those who do.
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True.
Yeah, why does everyone keep framing this as site:reddit.com fixing Google rather than Google fixing Reddit? Either way Reddit seem to be planning on cutting off their own nose.
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There’s no way “Don’t make me use your shitty app” isn’t the #1 requested feature today
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If you mean can reddit continue to shoot themselves in the head until they eventually stop turning a profit fall over and die? Sure!
Hey you did say “mostly serious”…
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Sorry for the long delay: I was away from the internet (well working and when I got home I was reading, listening to music, watching films with the kids, going to gigs, cooking, or being tired!)
Firstly I try not to use something instead of Google. I avoid search engines as a first unnecessary step. If I ask a student to go to a particular site they will search for it, and maybe not find it, I type in the site. Generally your browser history is all over this pretty quickly.
Secondly if I want to look up, say, exactly when Halie Mergia (last night’s gig) released his albums and how he got back into music I will go to Wikipedia direct, it’s the kind of thing it’s reliable for (and I will check wiki pages for controversy, activity, notes issues etc. sure it’s just an encyclopaedia and has some of the issues relating to that but it also has ways of noting those issues on its page.
I will also go to other sources which collect particular information so searching an actor in IMDb or a film on Rottwn tomatoes or a tv series on Justwatch rather than Google.
I will often look for local information on local organisations websites.
I’ll look up newspapers on Lexis Nexis or on Internet Archive depending on how I am trying to find it (Nexis has the antithesis of Googles black box approach to search which suits me). I use specialised databases also.
I often find myself looking up a book via wirldcat.org or Amazon (advantages and dis to both).
My default search is DuckDuckGo which suffers from lack of localisation but has less enshittified results: I am less likely to have spam sites in one of my students search results in Google versus mine I find I have less scam sites with malware ads clogging the feed - the kinds of things first years ask them have been targets for Markova chain/seo spam/rings of chum for a long time.
I try to approach the internet the way I do a streaming service on the TV, not as something sit in front of to find out what it is I want to consume but try to go where I want to for what I want.
So instead of Spotify’s playlists For Me! I will choose a radio show to break me out of my circle of music (currently this Groovers Corner - Peter Curtin | Groovers Corner - Peter Curtin - RTÉ 2XM )
Which reminds me of dana Boyd saying years ago that curation was going to be more important than search. She also checked BoingBoing in the morning when she said this. So I see in my absence a whole bunch of things I should read!
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Thanks for the reply. I too tend to hit a handful of semi reliable sites for the bulk of questions they can answer. But some things require more sleuthing and I have noticed that Google seems less and less useful for me.
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Sorry I should have said “depends on what I’m looking for” for brevity and my phone freaked out in the middle of that. But I think it needed examples.
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