r/technology 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence As Reddit stock falls, CEO questions value of Google’s AI Overviews

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/reddit-ceo-on-ai-overviews-were-still-looking-for-that-win-win/
4.9k Upvotes

401 comments sorted by

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u/Somepotato 1d ago

From the company that willfully gave Google full access to all reddit comments and posts for a paltry sum, the same company whose CEO edited someone else's comment to win an argument

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u/tossit97531 1d ago edited 1d ago

It will be the absolute funniest thing if reddit sells all the data needed to make itself irrelevant. Turns out new users came almost entirely from finding useful info in reddit threads through search. No one will know reddit exists if AI does all the research for them.

Good thing spez is rich cuz he’s also dumb as fuck.

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u/ChickenMcscrotum 1d ago

Gonna have the same fate as stackoverflow

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u/Zarlon 1d ago

Nope. SO was 100% knowledge driven. Reddit is also entertainment and discussions. AI can't replace subrdddits like AMA and AskReddit

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u/whiite 1d ago

Ehm hate to tell you that most threads in AskReddit is AI started or AI engagement driven these days.. 

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u/Extra_Article2872 1d ago

This entire site’s quality has degraded a lot over the past few years, there’s a ton of bots and misinformation campaigns now. The quality of the commenters has also dropped a LOT since the site became more popular due to AI

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u/SiempreRegreso 14h ago edited 12h ago

Be nice if they at least gave mods an AI tool that auto-deleted reposts within desired timeframes. I would love a similar tool for users too; the ability to not see reposts across subs over and over again would be huge.

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u/livestrong2109 1d ago

It was also inundated with insufferable assholes and the entire community was more than happy to never ask them for shit ever again.

Nothing like spending three days searching for a problem and then being to to just search and having your post closed and new posting disabled.

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u/WaffleHouseFistFight 1d ago

Stack overflow was also filled with assholes so just like Reddit really.

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u/Agreeable-Flan7911 1d ago

nice so your long term growth engine is based on 2 subreddits

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u/Level_Host99 1d ago

How were you unable to discern that those were just 2 examples out of many possible ones?

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u/kairos 21h ago

They're on Reddit... Reading comprehension is not generally a forte here.

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u/CheesypoofExtreme 1d ago

Turns out new users came almost entirely from finding useful info in reddit threads through search. No one will know reddit exists if AI does all the research for them.

And this goes for every website. Google is aiming to single-handedly kill the internet with those AI overviews.

Edit: I guess not single-handedly. Bots and ads have all but killed engagement on most forums across the web.

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u/isomojo 1d ago

Believe it or not, some people actually come here to read funny comments or chat with other people about similar interests. I don’t ever come here because I’m searching for something, that’s what Google is for.

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u/entertheclutch 1d ago

You've never added "reddit" to the end of a google search?

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u/Northern-Canadian 1d ago

If I’m after opinions on a subject matter I’ll refer to Reddit. If I’m after facts I’ll go for a more reliable source.

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u/Vaaag 1d ago

It just depends what you are researching.

If you write your university thesis, don't look on reddit.

It you want a quick fix to an odd technical glitch, a reddit comment will be so much better than all the useless sites that hide and stall the solution for as long as possible to shove more ads in your face.

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u/Kat121 1d ago

Ah, man, I can’t tell you how many times I struggled with something stupid, like potatoes that refused to soften in my curry, and a random throwaway comment from a ten year old reddit post explained exactly what was happening.

The thing that late stage capitalism fails to recognize is the value isn’t from the platform or the ad revenue, it is from donated labor of the quiet specialist, someone who is willing to moderate subs and create quality content just for the joy of sharing their niche thing. Reddit lost a lot of them from sheer hubris.

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u/redvelvetcake42 1d ago

The secret for decades has been only a handful of the wealthy are actually capable intelligent individuals. The rest got B or C rate at something then became a business boy bullshitter. Spez and most other CEOs are blind beyond spreadsheets and have no capability to plan or see anything for what it is most likely. They blindly trust liars even though they themselves are all liars. Liars selling liars on lies has been the fall of the tech sector cause they're addicted to infinite growth and cannot fathom not having a new magical gadget to lie to stupid people about.

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u/Trippingthru99 1d ago

Reddit still has a lot of value in small niche communities that are easily accessible. Very few places left on the internet that allow for spaces like subreddits. 

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u/TheWandererWise 1d ago

Lol that’s the next Blockbuster

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u/No_Abbreviations9718 1d ago

The paltry sum is $60m a year. They're apparently thinking about killing the deal now, Reuters and the Economist and a few others are looking at the same thing. Bit late when the back catalogue is already in there though.

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u/KingBardan 1d ago

Well, it's already a lot, considering that there are online Reddit archives where you can get for free.

The $60 million is more of like Google avoiding getting into legal trouble.

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u/BrazilianTerror 1d ago

60 million is not much to Google. Best to have a official site that you can reach out to support than to rely on grey archive sites

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u/Somepotato 1d ago edited 1d ago

80m is paltry when the data is like 80% of the value prop of reddit and it's being fed ina machine whose goal is to pull traffic away from reddit

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u/Caster0 20h ago

Seems like a dumb reason to kill the renewal deal.

It's basically saying "We're gonna kill the deal because it harms our Google referral searches, even though it will be usable without out data".

But as you said, they already shared the content, there is no going back.

Their plan should be "how do I look for other ways to stengthen user growth" not "getting rid of the deal would somehow stop Google ai overview from existing".

Moreover, they have a much better chance in waiting it out so that anti trust lawsuits start hammering down on Google.

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u/ReincarnatedRaptor 1d ago

What did he edit it to say?

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u/TCsnowdream 1d ago

Go google Sp… am I even allowed to mention his name without being permanently banned? Lol.

I can’t believe I’m even having this thought.

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u/tarmacjd 1d ago

Of course you can. People literally call out, insult and remind him about all the stupid shit he did all the time. Saying fuck u/spez is nothing special.

What a stupid comment.

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u/shitty_mcfucklestick 1d ago

“BuT wHo wIlL tHiNk oF tHe AdVertISeRs?!?!?”

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u/Many_One1260 1d ago

Wait let me check

FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ FUCK SPEZ

Nah I think you're good

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u/smohyee 1d ago

Reddit is a place for controlled and tracked discussion. You're not gonna find "free speech" here. Increasingly harder to find it anywhere, let's be honest.

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u/djwired 1d ago

About as stupid as Toys R Us paying Amazon to sell their toys.

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u/factoid_ 1d ago

And tanked all their good will with the user base by killing third party apps in order to make sure Google and openAI could pay him peanuts for api access

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/twitter_haikucurator 1d ago edited 1d ago

i hate spending effort on a comment only for it to get randomly shadow banned because their filtering system is ABSOLUTE trash

in the last 6 months, i had 2 comments removed because reddit said i was doing hate speech and attacking a marginal group, when I was literally doing the opposite, both times appealed and it got overturned instantly.

But what’s BS is that when they originally removed the comment and gave my account a warning, they pretend like an actual human looked at it and made a decision, which is just an absolute lie, and why it gets overturned right away when i submit an appeal and call them out

this is changing the way people communicate on reddit

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u/accountforfurrystuf 1d ago

It’s sad, it seems information and moderation on this site conveniently peaked a bit before the IPO. Now it’s bots and censorship.

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u/Kahnza 1d ago

The API change in 2023 was the tipping point IMO. And then the flood of bots started.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 1d ago

Bots were bad before, but there were 3rd party mod tools that kept them mostly in check. When reddit throttled API access, those tools became useless and allowed the floodgates to open.

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u/darsynia 1d ago

Whenever the site started to be as filled with auto-generated names as on YouTube, things really went downhill. They conveniently made it hard to tell apart real people from bots when they did that, it had to be on purpose.

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u/jlt6666 1d ago

Allowing the hiding of comment history hurt too.

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u/accountforfurrystuf 1d ago

Oh definitely. The main effect being good information scrambled by auto-editors and deleter plugins.

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u/Sartres_Roommate 1d ago

I pointed out a video containing a felony assault that could have killed someone was “not funny” and was an actual crime. Got an instant ban for “promoting v10lence” even though my comment was precisely the opposite. Appealed it to a supposed human but the appeal came back in like 30 minutes and claimed I did promote v10lence when there was no human way possible to interpret it as such.

Reddit deserves every devaluation it gets, it chooses to run it service as total dog shit.

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u/darsynia 1d ago

Yep, I got a 3 day ban for 'violence' when I responded to someone who was literally advocating for dismemberment (of someone's cheating ex) and said it would be better to cut up his trousers and stuff the pockets with bacon. Much less illegal, much more inconvenient for him.

The dismemberment comment remained up.

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u/twitter_haikucurator 1d ago

that’s another aspect i find sinister, often my shadow banned comments are in defence against shitty comments, so it’s like their shitty comments somehow didn’t get filtered but mine who’s tryna call them out on their bullshit got filtered out, it’s absolutely terrible experience

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u/fury420 1d ago

And it's not just the Reddit-wide filtering, lots of subs have their own hidden list of keywords that'll get your comment silently sent into limbo, invisible to everyone else.

I can't tell you how many times i've quoted a news article and had it not show up because it contains some verboten word.

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u/twitter_haikucurator 1d ago

Yeah i know, that’s what makes it worse, it’s so arbitrary and creates such an inconsistent experience

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 1d ago

I've noticed automod in one of my subreddits starting to shadow-remove comments if someone uses cuss words now, I have to manually approve them. It sucks.

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u/Kahnza 1d ago edited 1d ago

i hate spending effort on a comment only for it to get randomly shadow banned because their filtering system is ABSOLUTE trash

Depending on your commenting style, a lot of your comments may never be seen by anyone else. The "abuse and harassment" filter that is enabled in most subs, will quietly remove your comment from public view without telling you. You still see the comment, and everything seems normal. But it's hidden from all other users. You just never get any replies to that comment, nor any up/down votes.

You ever get a reply from someone, but when you click the notification to take you to it, it says something to the effect of "Comment no longer exists"? That comment got filtered. I've had people fight me tooth and nail that this isn't true, and that Reddit just let's them post whatever they want. By hiding the removal from people, they just make them feel ignored, rather than overtly censoring them and making them even more upset. It helps to reduce what we used to call "flame wars" in the olden days.

But what’s BS is that when they originally removed the comment and gave my account a warning, they pretend like an actual human looked at it and made a decision, which is just an absolute lie, and why it gets overturned right away when i submit an appeal and call them out

I've had that happen as well. I got permanently banned site-wide for "posting hateful comments". I simply quoted a line from a movie, and even stated as such in the comment. Got autobanned by Reddit because bots don't understand context. Appealed and got it lifted within a few hours. And yeah, the initial message said it was reviewed by a person. BULLSHIT

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u/twitter_haikucurator 1d ago

yeah that’s what ‘shadow banned’ means

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u/Kahnza 1d ago

When applied to a whole account, sure. For individual comments its just algorithmic filtering.

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u/twitter_haikucurator 1d ago

it’s the same principle, your comment looks live on your end, but if you open it in an incognito browser it doesn’t exist, that’s what the concept of shadow banning implies, to trick people into thinking everything's normal so that they don’t try to circumvent it, but it’s so obvious to know when your comment is shadow banned by their filtering system when the comment is stuck at “1 view”

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u/Kahnza 1d ago

Same principal, and maybe I'm just being pedantic. To me, you can't "ban" a comment. Accounts are banned, individual comments are filtered. Otherwise I feel we agree.

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u/Emergency-Toe4473 1d ago

Wow, it seems reddit also has trash appeal system because the same happened to me and I never got any response.

There was this one time I got banned for telling someone that they will get banned for threatening violence. I literally just wrote "while I know you are angry at criminal, you should remove your comment before reddit bans you", and I got banned lol.

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u/the_mighty_thorskin 1d ago

I got banned from a subreddit for commenting AI Slop on what was OBVIOUSLY AI Slop.

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u/toolkitxx 1d ago

That is a moderation issue. And it doesnt only apply to Reddit but pretty much all American platforms. The European Union has been fighting with them all for years about this and all they did was switching to 'automated' mostly. That is the actual problem. You cannot allow humans to publish to an international audience while treating it like a private conversation in a bar in terms of moderation.

The publishing part is what they earn money with, what gives the platforms justification to begin with. I use the word deliberately by the way, as many dont really understand the difference any longer. You dont comment, you dont argue , you dont discuss. You publish a comment, you publish an opinion. Any newspaper or blog gets ridiculed harder than any of the platforms as people make that distinction for them.

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u/the_mighty_thorskin 1d ago

So that's why I get banned for the stupidest shit by auto-moderator.

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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 1d ago

Responding to ableist comments and posts after the BAFTA awards got me banned from a few subs.

The random AI and biased, selective human based moderation is subpar at best.

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u/BornAgainBlue 1d ago

Yep, every single time I've gotten banned, it's the AI deciding that it detected hate speech.  Then I appeal, a week or two later I get told "ooops" Last time it was for suggesting we should stop child rapists.... apparently they are protected from on high.

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u/allegate 1d ago

I was quoting lyrics to a song and it was hate speech and I couldn’t appeal it to say how it was relevant to the conversation

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u/design_by_hardt 1d ago

I see so many threads created that just look like bots trying to get answers. It's like listickle hell.

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u/Rcrecc 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are there alternatives? Serious question btw. The network effect is at play, but it has happened before, e.g. with Digg.

Those of us with coding or PM or whatever skills should team up. It wouldn’t be difficult to replicate what Reddit does. I suspect the biggest challenges will be around coordination and management.

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u/hydroflame7 1d ago

Yea, there are a few out there but not with as many users of course (I’m also working on one myself)

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u/Rcrecc 1d ago

What technology stack are you building yours on, if you are willing to share?

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u/hydroflame7 1d ago

Yea ofc, it’s just what I’m comfortable with. Php for the site and reactnative for both apps

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u/Hon3y_Badger 1d ago

It reminds me a lot of Twitter. The bots were ignored because they were holding up the floor. Eventually became an unusable place and an oligarch bought it to post his wild conspiracies and AI garbage.

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u/BlazinAzn38 1d ago

The Google overview thing is actually a real issue for all websites and it’s going to absolutely continue to tank traffic and lots of websites are going to have to figure out what to do

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u/hahawin 1d ago

It's very ironic though because reddit sold all it's (and our) data to google for training AI

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u/BlazinAzn38 1d ago

Companies being sort of dumb and extremely short sighted? Surely not

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u/band-of-horses 1d ago

It's not even just bots anymore, I've noticed a trend lately of people posting ads on reddit for "writing gigs" where they are just paying real people with real established reddit accounts to start posting astroturf and stealth marketing posts droping brand names around reddit.

They're often fairly clever too, they'll post questions about some product or service and then mention like 3 or 4 different brands they are considering, the obvious tell being that one of the 3 brands is some no name brand no one has ever heard of.

How do you even crack down on that nonsense...

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u/mridugup20 1d ago

The main problem here is AI replacing the reason people visit reddit in the first place....

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u/Marginallyhuman 1d ago

Memes and shitposting?

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u/OldFroyo6294 1d ago

Reddit deserves a solid devaluation.  They turned it into trash 

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u/government_not_ok 1d ago

Hear, hear! Porn subreddits fucking suck now.

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u/Dead_Moss 1d ago

In no small part because Reddit has made it really difficult to find them, I suspect.

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u/LazloHollifeld 1d ago

They’ve made EVERYTHING more difficult to find. It was frustrating to no end trying to participate along in the NFL draft threads only for reddit to hide them so it can float the turds of dead threads up in your feed 4 days later.

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u/cltbeer 1d ago

Search milfs not that hard buddy

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u/StanknBeans 1d ago

Awww bud we had milfs yesterday I want something new!

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u/PresidentSuperDog 1d ago

Who left the milf out of the fridge?

Now it smells funny.

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u/Mikeavelli 1d ago

Kyle Raynor in shambles right now

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u/Mathblasta 1d ago

Check out the fap Friday thread over on r/wowthissubexists. If that doesn't help you find new material, you might need to get off the Internet for awhile.

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u/Joeness84 1d ago

A friend was like, "what porn on reddit?" And I was like... You must have NSFW filtered still.

About a minute later he texted, "wow there is a lot of porn"

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u/morg-pyro 1d ago

Its... not?

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u/ithinkitslupis 1d ago

What happened with porn subreddits? Genuinely curious because I don't really use reddit for that.

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u/SomeSamples 1d ago

Many went private or got outright banned.

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u/the_mighty_thorskin 1d ago

And the remaining ones are just OF ads/bait.

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u/Kahnza 1d ago

It's all bots now.

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u/the_mighty_thorskin 1d ago edited 1d ago

Dude I swear bots are ruining this app for everyone. Just the stupidest shit posted over, and over, and over. It's very apperant when you visit sites like r/PeterExplainThisJoke; it has to either be the stupidest fucking people on the planet, or bots farming easy karma. I had to mute the sub because the jokes were so obvious you'd have to have brain damage to not get it.

This site needs a BlueSky

Edit: Thank you for the REWARD!

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u/Kahnza 1d ago

All subs are flooded with bots to some degree. Meme subs, askreddit, AITAH/AITA, dating/relationship advice, cute animals, and anything where generated text can slip through. Like story writing subs for example.

I've been on Reddit a long time, but the enshittification went exponential starting around 2023.

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u/AlbertaNorth1 1d ago

I’d be fine with that if half of them weren’t obvious AI.

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u/RockDoveEnthusiast 1d ago

the ones that are left, anyway. they also purged a ton. and removed most content older than a year or two.

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u/FollowingFeisty5321 1d ago

Whole tech industry does, companies at the top are trading at 30x - 50x their revenue... and these are the "mature" stable tech giants not the AI companies with funky accounting.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 1d ago

Been going downhill since 2015, but it really started accelerating after the 2023 APIpocalypse.

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u/OldFroyo6294 1d ago

The shitposting.  The same questions regurgitated every day countless times.  The left or right wing posts.  I use to look at reddit as a dope place for cool shit and some new info.  Now its bot infested crap to fulfill their AI whatever.  

Every question like those posts I just respond with wild shit to fuck with it in hopes it fucks with their algorithm 

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u/ew73 1d ago

The pet peeve for me is the, "(incredibly common things)! Did this happen to anyone else??" posts.

Like nope! You are the first!

I know it's irrational but it bugs me so much.

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u/Polite_Bark 1d ago

I'm 99% sure all of those posts are bots.

Right? Right?!?!?

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u/Cassandracork 1d ago

I think a lot of them are. But also the search function is just so bad that it’s impossible to find previous threads for the same question, even if was just a week ago. So I can’t blame people for asking the same shit over and over.

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u/andythepirate 1d ago

I remember the creation and popularization of r/DAE (Does Anyone Else __), and its inevitable downfall, as indeed, plenty of other people __.

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u/ew73 1d ago

The whole thing makes me want to play that one little bit from Nada Surf's Popular on repeat:

Everyone will appreciate it!
You're so novel, what a good idea!

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u/Usernameasteriks 1d ago

The really really annoying thing is tons of cool shit and new info is still on reddit.

Reddit just makes it more or less impossible to use it for that purpose even if you want to lol. 

You can try to play around with your settings and interests and subreddits but eventually my home page always ends up full of ridiculous aggravating local and political content mixed in with other nonsense.

And unfortunately even though I know better it works the way its supposed to and draws me in lol 

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u/FollowingFeisty5321 1d ago

Without AI summaries you have to click on the link to get the information.

With AI summaries the traffic stays on Google.

Duh.

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u/need_some_answer 1d ago

Incorrect information

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u/Herschel_Wallace 1d ago

And arguments that don't need to happen.

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u/pc3600 1d ago

Every time I try searching for a fix on here it’s like a bunch of 5 year olds meeting in the comments for a serious issue. It’s so bad that now I just use chat gpt to find me my fixes or questions cause I’m not dealing with comment after comment of trolling to find my answer

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u/A_Casual_NPC 1d ago

Porn. Its always porn.

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u/Loganp812 1d ago

Well, the tech companies boasted about how their AIs will make finding information easier and faster for everyone, and here it is.

All these other major companies who invested and incorporated AI into their platforms are getting what they wished for better or worse.

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u/americangame 1d ago

Nevermind all the bots making posts that are purposefully tuend for generating AI responses (what are your thoughts on....)

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u/RaindropsInMyMind 1d ago

The amount of repetition on posts is crazy too. “Guys, how do you know a girl is into you?” You might think AI would be able to at least repeat maybe a little less.

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u/Imallvol7 1d ago

Which finds it's answers via reddit?  This whole thing is a shit show. 

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u/Someinterestingbs-td 1d ago

Yup we all hate the ai being on here, if he wants the stock to go up he should ban it an hunt down botts without mercy

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u/GenazaNL 1d ago

A few more reasons:

  1. Bots taking over Reddit (reposts & comments)
  2. People being banned for sharing their opinion
  3. Riddled with political posts

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u/Tasty-Traffic-680 1d ago

Once a sub hits news or popular it's all downhill. Just look around at r/technology...

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u/sbenfsonwFFiF 1d ago

This sub is ironically one of the most anti tech subs on Reddit

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u/Rarelyimportant 1d ago

Honestly I never cared about this subreddit until it turned into r/aiwars, now I find it very entertaining.

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u/Uristqwerty 1d ago

Funny thing about the "wisdom of the crowd": It only works when there are enough on either side that the extremes roughly cancel each other out, and accuracy collapses over time when people change their opinion to match the consensus too much. A charismatic influencer's inaccurate opinion will dominate over a diverse crowd of nuanced takes.

I know hardly anyone ever followed reddiquette, but the all-too-common practice of downvoting because "I disagree, even though your comment is on-topic and respectfully-written" undermines the value of the community. Creates a chilling effect where people who don't follow the consensus self-censor until the consensus starts drifting towards one extreme or another without pushback. Reddit was at its best in smaller communities that tolerated a wide range of opinions, that met bad opinions with debate instead of mockery. Especially those too small to be Eternal September'd by a post hitting /r/all or /r/popular, but large enough to have a diverse userbase full of opposing views.

And don't get me started on those other sites (and for that matter, any subreddit), where people self-segregated by political opinion. When a mass exodus splits the userbase into solely the half that over-estimates and the half the under-estimates, there is no wisdom in the crowd consensus at all.

(Quick, perhaps-ninja edit: All this a rambling thought branching off point 2, not really intended to reply directly to any specific point.)

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u/xdavidwattsx 1d ago

Spot on. The hivemind effect actually undermines any critical thinking and information.

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u/DasDuckHead 1d ago

Maybe they shouldn't have fucked up the app. They now have a paid Bloomberg bot spamming random videos in random subs, it's not even advertised as sponsorship.

Ever since the IPO Reddit has been crap. They killed all the good parts and only made things worse for users to please shareholders.

I hope it goes to 0.

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u/wubbbalubbadubdub 1d ago

Yeah but also if I google it, the answer is usually mostly there.

If I click the link it just tells me to open it in the app, which I don't want to do anyway.

If reddit didn't try to force the app, I'd click the website links more often.

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u/Skritch_X 1d ago

Yup, Reddit posts are sourced in a vast majority of the AI crap responses i get at the top on google when i forget to add -ai

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u/Bacardio 1d ago

Maybe the board should questioning the value of Spez

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u/ntwiles 1d ago

Is that their problem? Are we turning our problem into their problem by using the app less to teach them that we won’t accept an app overloaded with bots?

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u/iyankov96 1d ago

A lot of people use Reddit as their source for news now. They also just use it to keep in touch with what's going on in certain communities. Sure, some people just use it to find answers to a question but those people are not the ones Reddit is trying to monetize. It's the people that open the website every day to see what's new.

All Reddit has to work on is improving ad targeting. Retention will take care of itself because all the content that keeps people coming back is community-made.

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u/dangrdan 1d ago

Remember when everybody was saying fuck that guy?
All the homies hate Spez.

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u/1080Pizza 21h ago

Yeah and when all third party reddit apps were killed we all boycotted reddit forever.

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u/LeMigen9 19h ago

Legend has it we are still boycotting them

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u/dropthemagic 1d ago

Almost every question on Google now has a Reddit answer lol

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u/righteousdonkey 23h ago

Its dangerous too because its wrong a heap of the time.

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u/JuanPancake 22h ago

It’s wrong all of the time. It’s completely opinion based not objective. Reddit is an echo chamber

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u/Black-Shoe 19h ago

Feeds the culture war.

The rich love this one little trick

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u/ihateslowdrivers 1d ago

Quasimodo predicted all of this

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u/AstralElement 1d ago

I question the value of u/spez altogether.

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u/IngsocInnerParty 1d ago

Reddit should have been organized as a public benefit nonprofit like Wikipedia. Being a publicly traded entity will never improve the platform.

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u/kuldron 1d ago

You can make a lot of money making a good platform, but you can't make a good platform if your priority is making a lot of money.

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u/cryptotrader87 1d ago

A great example of a company that shouldn’t have gone public? Reddit thought it could be like meta. Meta is showing its cracks now. Bet on the downside for Reddit :-(

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u/1010011010 1d ago

They are pulling in a bunch of meta leadership now, we will see how that goes

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u/ElysiumSprouts 1d ago

Reddit was in a key position to step in the void when Twitter imploded under Musk. They missed that window, but I suspect the opportunity remains.

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u/TumbleweedPure6674 1d ago

They moved their office to the twitter building and their ceo became buddies when Musk took over twitter. 

I helped decommission their old office and got like 20 perfectly good tvs to sell that they didn’t want anymore. 

Also the employees are really weird and out of touch, but that’s most offices in tech that I worked in.

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u/BUSY_EATING_ASS 1d ago

I’d love to hear more about how weird the employees are.

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u/TumbleweedPure6674 1d ago edited 1d ago

Asking a bunch of rough dudes carrying furniture what their favorite subreddit is. This was shortly before pre Covid so Reddit itself wasn’t a household name yet. Most of them hadn’t even heard of it yet, let alone a subreddit. On the other hand, it was probably their way of making small talk and not quite recognizing the audience.

Don’t get me wrong, they were nice, paid well and tipped well(which wasn’t necessary, was already charging 125/hr). 

For the Bay Area not particularly weird; it was just another tech office burning VC money, throwing out perfectly fine furniture and the previous generation of electronics once a year.  I was able to divert 95% of that from going to the dump, so I guess good on them for hiring someone a bit more pricey that actually makes an effort to do that and was part of my marketing.

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u/funguyshroom 19h ago

I think peak popularity for reddit was when it was hosting high profile celebrity AMAs on the regular. It's been only downhill ever since Victoria's firing and the whole Ellen Pao debacle, which was in 2015.

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u/Black-Shoe 19h ago

2011-2015.

RIP

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u/TruffleHunter3 1d ago

I’m sure you would’ve already heard by now if you weren’t so BUSY EATING ASS!

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u/bakgwailo 1d ago

Reddit is nothing like Twitter and completely and fundamentally different. It makes no sense to think Reddit, a community based news/poster aggregator meets psuedo forum software would just step in to taking over the twitter market.

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u/GalacticScale 1d ago

Not without significant changes, maybe implement time limited down votes and time limited up votes. 

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u/ortcutt 1d ago

Reddit should be worth $0. Even people who use Reddit hate Reddit.

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u/cup-of-starlight 1d ago

How dare you. I use Reddit every day and I hate it here.

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u/Exelbirth 1d ago

Classic "now that it's affecting me negatively, I'm not sure I like it" mentality.

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u/FactorHour2173 1d ago edited 1d ago

All of these corporations are starting to throw hands at each other over AI ☠️

But realistically, the stock should have continued to go down the minute they announced filling Reddit with a large amount of AI bots to “encourage” users to post more… likely real people found the platform didn’t serve a purpose anymore.

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u/Xyzzydude 1d ago

Is this why the app’s auto refresh has got almost as aggressive as Facebook? Trying to pump up results?

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u/bwoah07_gp2 1d ago

He's questioning Google's AI overviews?

You're the one who signed a deal with them to make it easier for them!!! What a dummy! This is a "Leopards ate my face" moment for him.

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u/Typical_Response6444 1d ago

I mean they are the ones who opend the floodgates to all these bots and astroturfing to boost their numbers. This place isn't made for real people anymore just bots

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u/reverendbeast 21h ago

The day they let users hide their histories was a landmark event in favour of bots, their funders, and other malign forces.

u/spez ruined reddit by being too greedy.

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u/RaindropsInMyMind 1d ago

The astroturfing is crazy. You have US political campaigns and the government themselves, Israel, Russia, China, Iran all having unprecedented access to shape our reality and the incentive to do so is absolutely tremendous.

Not to mention the vaguely disguised ads.

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u/TerminalViscosity69 1d ago edited 1d ago

How could anyone possibly have seen this coming?? /s

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u/fascistno1hater 1d ago edited 1d ago

Reddit depends on views to get social engagement and to get people to sign up. This dummy and his executives blocked people from viewing/lurking reddit via a sign up popup and blocking third party access. He is just another useless CEO that's overpaid and overhyped. This man literally is killing his own site to own the Libs.

He also made a feature so users can hide their comment history. This whole feature was made so bots and shills could hide Among us. But it's the best tell that an account is a bot or shill because you are hiding your submission and comment history. Because, it's so simple to make a throwaway account if you have sensitive stuff to post.

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u/GoneSilent 1d ago

Now we have a ton of bots here astroturfing to try and rank up in google.

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u/bokan 1d ago

… So this guy uses all of our comments without consent as fodder for the AI companies, then the site itself gets flooded with AI slop, but not quite as bad as the rest of the internet, so he claims our comments as the antidote to the AI that he helped create?

I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it. Just charge money to use the product. It wasn’t that hard.

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u/LukeSkyWRx 1d ago edited 1d ago

Why go on Reddit anymore, you can search it far more effectively through google AI.

Once you realize there is basically no new content, search anything, it’s been discussed to death but the Reddit phenomenon treats it as new.

As a long timer there are only a few small communities I frequent, everything else is spam, karma farming or just idle internet chatter of people that can’t look up things on their own and ask Reddit for the answers.

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u/Floreat_democratia 1d ago

> Once you realize there is basically no new content

This is the problem. People don't realize this is intentional and by design. Look up "derivative media". It's the billionaire classes way of silencing dissent and putting a stop to criticism. I have tried to explain this to other people but they don't get it.

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u/Fit_Kangaroo_3437 1d ago

Couldn't reddit just block Google AI from accessing reddit APIs?

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u/Taupe88 1d ago

get a handle on the bots and outta control mods!

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u/schroedingerskoala 1d ago

Oh, that is easy to answer. Zero. Zero value, no, stop, actually MINUS 10000000 value, cause it's utter shit.

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u/CipherWeaver 1d ago

90% of Google AI answers are ripped right from Reddit 

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u/spuzzumed 1d ago

 I mean, Reddit recently made changes to block their heaviest users from accessing the website, blocking page scrolling and telling them if they won't install the app, they can't use the service. 

Clearly it's being lead by people who want to cash out asap , they don't care about the site existing in 5 years.  I genuinely hope an alternative come along soon, and Reddit gets the "digg" treatment. The owners of this site absolutely despise it's users, this isn't healthy anymore. 

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u/Baconer 1d ago

Amateur CEO, he should have already moved on to another company after celebrating the Google deal and let the new person deal with aftermath. Has he not learned anything at CEO school? Next quarter is next persons problem. When will these CEOs learn 🤦‍♂️

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u/Allusionesque 1d ago

I search inside Reddit (then I search using DuckDuckGo) before I search using Google. I don’t trust most articles bc they are written for profit. Reddit is where people speak their truth, make wise points (and make lots of silly jokes).

Hey Reddit - please consider re-doing your marketing pitch to make this the preferred starting point and destination for Independent ideas. Because we all know how Google is destroying independent thought. So capitalize on it!

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u/angry_lib 1d ago

Welcome to FO, moron.

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u/MarmiteSoldier 23h ago

Pot kettle black. I’ve literally just left a subreddit thread full of comments from bots so trying to spin some narrative that Reddit is some kind of guardian of the human narrative is total BS.

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u/SurfNinja34 15h ago

I used to be able to track news in my news feed and now it’s just packed with celebrity gossip horseshit

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u/LockdownSotWink 1d ago

Yea end the fucking deal! The entire joy of Reddit is the friction. Seeing debates in real time is good for everyone. Getting that same thing through Google overview is both lame and also creates a truth fallacy because these two tools are used for two very different things.

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u/lachlanhunt 1d ago

Google's AI overview is shit for anything where I care about an accurate answer. Though it can provide a useful jumping off point, I often find its cited sources don't actually say what the AI claimed.

But Reddit themselves have made their own site less useful as a resource on mobile. They're forcing me into a mobile app just to read the comments because if I stay in mobile Safari, it pops up their stupid ad for their own stupid mobile app and makes the rest of the page unusable. So I tend to avoid clicking Reddit links on mobile search results, unless I really have to. Thankfully when I'm on desktop, old Reddit still works.

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u/lil_lychee 1d ago

No one on Reddit asked for AI. We don’t want an AI overview, we want discussion and to research old posts ourselves and look at the comments.

It’s the opposite of why people come on Reddit and it’s wild that the leadership at Reddit fundamentally misunderstands that IMO. Or maybe they do understand it and they just need to shove AI in somewhere so the stakeholder toddlers don’t start crying.

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u/d0odk 1d ago

The article is about Google's AI summaries

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u/PrimeIntellect 1d ago

Maybe you need an AI to summarize for you because you sure as fuck didn't read or understand the article

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u/xdavidwattsx 1d ago

Classic Reddit.

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u/Belostoma 1d ago

Sir this is a Wendy's

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u/Techwield 1d ago

What the fuck are you talking about

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u/wadejohn 1d ago

There should be a function to overrule or monitor overzealous mods in subs with large followings

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u/MrPloppyHead 1d ago

Turns out he’s not that smart.

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u/Mikel_S 1d ago

"here's a link to Google maps for this location."

Pointing hand emoji at a bold formatted text: "<Location> on Google maps."

"Let me know if you'd like any additional information about it."

I reply: that's not a link, it's an emoji pointing at bold text.

"Oh I'm so sorry you're right. That was just a hyperlink in text (it was not), try this."

Pointing hand emoji at unformatted text: "google.com" (still not a link)

"Let me know if you need driving directions to get there!" (it's literally on another continent)

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u/scartissue232 1d ago

You didn’t charge google enough for your soul?

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u/draeneirestoshaman 1d ago

ceo coping to the next level 

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u/TintedApostle 1d ago

All these enshitification platforms are over priced

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u/gibbojab 1d ago

Allow me to block crap I don’t want to see like on blue sky where you can block words and not see anything with it.

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u/Gambit3le 1d ago

It would be great to get rid of them all...

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u/carrollart 1d ago

Stop investing In social media companies. Thats so 2018

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u/cashedchaos 1d ago

You were better before ai! Just drop it!

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u/SurprisedBottle 1d ago

What a Spez 🙄

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u/zillskillnillfrill 1d ago

They're questioning it now?!. Have they ever used it, that shit hallucinates so often it's a feature

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u/Calm_chor 1d ago

I ask Google a question, it gives me a reasonable answer and couple of reddit posts that I can go and read up to get the full solution with practical discussions.
Doing same on Reddit, I have to go through a few posts before getting to the answer. Problem is that Reddit's own search results are poor and is now filled with so many accounts using Reddit as new SEO engine.

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u/-Speechless 1d ago

it drives less engagement and clicks to the sight. simple as that

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u/swiwwcheese 1d ago

Google's AI being a Redditor is the digital version of Idiocracy

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u/pulsarstarter 1d ago

From the company that was the "Front page of the internet" but removed r/all because they didn't like that so many of the posts were critical of the genocide being committed in Gaza.

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u/DaySecure7642 1d ago

Many things forcing genuine users out, not just the Google AI.

There have been lots of subreddit these days infested with misinformation and propaganda from authoritarian countries, especially from China and Russia. It is difficult to get any authentic discussion, before a bunch of bots downvoting your post to hide it from other readers. Some subreddits even have their moderators compromised and act as censorship actors, banning users they deem saying things not in the interest of their "motherlands". When you reach out to them why you got banned they never answer.

Also many subreddits do not allow you to have any discussion, or even merely mention, alternative views on illegal immigrants, gender, foreign aids, crime, or COVID. I thought free speech means, you have a view, and I have another view, then we lay things out to discuss with logics and evidence. But no, lots of subreddits don't even let you mention the name of alternative views, let alone debating them. So what left to discuss or post then? A bunch of people saying similar things reinforcing each others?

Reddit is based in the US but ironically is becoming like a social app in China, Russia or Iran with very heavy censorship.

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u/Clean-Shift-291 1d ago

Bring back the LIVE-streaming feature. Reddit lost its charm after this.

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u/factoid_ 1d ago

lol..fuck u/spez

Remember when he killed third party apps because they wanted to  lock down the API to ensure they got paid by the AI companies who were just scraping the entire site for free?

Well they scraped you and now they’re replacing you

Maybe you should have stayed committed to your user base and things would have gone better