cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12715607
“I didn’t notice a single new or low-post-count forum”
“There Appears to Be No Benefit if a Forum is Hosted on a Subdomain or Which Software It Uses”
The author lists many reasons why reddit should not be at the top of search results. I listed even more reasons here: Reddit is dangerous. The admins are out of control. Humanity needs a viable alternative.
For products? I dunno. It all depends entirely on what it is. Because while I wouldn’t go to reddit for advice on what washer and dryer to buy, I have certainly seen a lot of people go to reddit to discuss in world use of tech and whether it would fit their lifestyle or user requirements. I appreciate that using reddit to be the next Amazon reviews is not the way. I don’t think it should be the next Google AdSense. But I wouldn’t say it doesn’t belong in search results.
These days it’s much easier and the information you can find on places like reddit is often better informed than most other Google search results because they’ve doubled down on making ad revenue. I don’t use reddit anymore but I can certainly see why some people do.
Lemmy has pretty much all the same problems as reddit does but at a much smaller scale because it’s just not as big. Would you suggest Google use Lemmy?
I agree, and I covered that in my blog. I would like to see a more diversified “discussions and forums”, that’s not just reddit links.
In general, privately-owned forums (running Xenforo, etc.) seem much better run than most reddit subs. I have never experienced the plethora of problems with reddit, on forums. I think it’s harder to spam and astroturf forums, and the owners & moderators have different incentives than reddit mods.
The bar to entry as a new person on smaller forums was often high.
I don’t remember experiencing that, but it makes me think of the bar to entry for running a reddit sub. Anyone can instantly create one for free and do whatever they want with it and get on the top of search results pretty quickly. Setting up your own forum is a lot more difficult and more of a commitment. I think there are benefits to that.
I agree with your last paragraph. I think the type of warnings Twitter implemented are a decent idea. I think in general people need more warnings that what they see on reddit and other social media is not policed for legal content – people can and do say whatever they like, and much of what people say is misinformation and disinformation.
I don’t think most people realize that reddit and other social media platforms have no obligation to take down illegal content. People seem WAY too trusting of things they read on reddit. If Google is going to be highlighting reddit results and putting them at the top, then they bear some responsibility for this.
Since the CDA’s passage in 1996, § 230© has been consistently interpreted by U.S. courts to provide broad immunity to platforms for hosting and facilitating a wide range of illegal content—from defamatory speech to hate speech to terrorist and extremist content.12 Notice of illegal content is irrelevant to such immunity.13 Thus, even if a platform like YouTube is repeatedly and clearly notified that it is hosting harmful content (such as ISIS propaganda videos), the platform remains immune from liability for hosting such harmful content.
To be clear, since I don’t think my meaning was clearly explained, I meant the the bar for entry on smaller forums outside of reddit. Reddit has generally had problems with high karma accounts bullying new accounts by taking advantage of the fact that new accounts are viewed (and have always been viewed) as less credible. But on private forums I was a part of in the early oughts and even the late 90’s, there were problems with treating newcomers of any stripe with distrust. Every time I joined a new tech forum back then that was the case. It was used as an anti spam, anti-troll checks and balances sort of system. To build karma was to be allowed the benefit of interaction outside the use of upvotes or downvotes. While it might have been effective (in the same way the invite tokens or similar measures are) it was also very exclusive and sort of made me feel unwelcome in the space. Part of the reason reddit grew in popularity was because it doesn’t have that unwelcoming feeling to the same extent because a lot of those measures just aren’t in place.
Of the resulting 122 URLs, 63 have a top comment with a self-promotional affiliate link. Often written months after the original thread was created.
Injecting (posting and manipulating) affiliate links is lucrative for affiliates - Reddit could resolve it by disallowing or automatically clearing affiliate links of links (URL shorteners would be a secondary concern that could be automatically handled too)
Without affiliate spam, it would or could still be lucrative for sellers and product sellers. Which is harder to resolve.
I find their repeated “I’m not outing anyone”, “I’m not here to out anyone” irritating, especially for evading sourcing examples. I guess it’s a very evasive, non-confrontational approach. But to me, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Either way sourcing isn’t likely to resolve the overall systematic (Reddit- and Google-sided) issue anyway.
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