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I've noticed I'll type in the exact name of the website but forget the .com to tell my browser to go directly there, so it will do a search. My results show the site I was looking for halfway down the page, with the first half being ads and even competitors of the site! I'm not searching for items from the site but the site itself yet Google is so useless it shows me a bunch of similar stuff even when I gave it a specific.

It's way too hard to cut through the search engine optimized spam when googling something now. Especially for product recommendations all you get are random top X lists.

Yeah, it's so useful because you get suggestions from real users along with discussion and a voting system. You're not just relying on an algorithm to point to a poorly written list with the right keywords stuffed in. Oh, you're looking for the best xyz? Here's a list of Amazon affiliate links chosen by an "expert." No thanks.

I'm a few miles up 35 and finding the only real utility Reddit provides other than killing time is /r/Austin, and even there ... well, I get NWS alerts on my phone, take transit and don't lose pets, so the level of usefulness may be more imagined than real.

At the same time, the initial reasons I joined Reddit other than link aggregation aren't what they once were. I've found that DIY projects I learn about on Reddit and then have questions about details on get zero responses, and the communities I joined years ago have been so overrun by people who want karma over discussion that there's not much value there, either.

Using Google to search Reddit can be useful, but then you get a great detailed post from four years ago and can't do anything with it if you have further questions. The thread is locked on account of age, and people get pissed if you post a new thread on the same topic that links to the original.

What this API fiasco has done is bring into specific relief where Reddit has already failed and turned all of those into a cohesive narrative that was lacking up to this point. I'd heard of Tildes but not Lemmy until this week, and already my work internet use has switched from RSS then Reddit to Beehaw then RSS.

I guess I needed to get hit over the head with just how bad things had gotten via external forces to overcome inertia. Interestingly, two months ago, I was running Windows on all my computers, and I finally snapped on how invasive notifications and forced-app shenangians had gotten.

The stages of grief may end with acceptance where people are involved, but they certainly don't need to with technologies and platforms. I'm starting to better understand the grousing I wrote off as narcissistic woe-the-hell-is-me was actually a congregation of coal-mine canaries.

I don't think this is the death of Reddit, but I do think it's the dumbing down of Reddit. A lot of the power users that spend all day interacting and posting are going to be the ones leaving. Reddit will turn from a social community back into a simple link aggregator with people posting articles and having the same discussions over and over again in the comments.

Yes it's vocal minority, but that local minority is the reason why silent majority have content that keeps them on reddit.

Yeah. Though the third party users are probably are the heaviest users so probably have an outsized impact on the content of various subreddits. So no, I don't think the lack of 3rd party clients and those users will kill Reddit, anymore than its killed twitter or Tumblr shennanigans has killed tumblr. That said I did just join today, and I do actually wonder given the death of 3rd party clients and the IPO when reddit will try to squash NSFW subreddits and posts. Thats the kind of thing I'd expect as they IPO and chase advertisers.

You are not wrong, but Reddit will never be the same. This whole IPO business is effectively the death of Reddit as we know it, to be replaced with a mediocre TikTok clone. It takes strong leadership among execs and ownership for profit-driven corporation to stay the course and remain successful.

Reddit has neither. Just a legacy and incumbency.

The problem is default subreddits grow too big with no way to make it better once critical Mass is reached. I think federation solves Thar problem entirely, since it encourages interaction across more niche spaces.

old.reddit is definitely going soon too unfortunately. I thought I’d just use that, but reddit’s actions in the past few days have convinced me that after 10 years it’s time to go.