Like, for example I have a specific issue with a digital audio converter by a popular brand but their customer service is awful. A simple google prompt followed by site:reddit.com would yield solutions almost every time. In fact I would say I did 90% of my googling that way. How do I break this cycle and do you feel this is one of the biggest challenges we’re facing? If anything, Reddit remains the biggest repo of easily accessible solutions for anything. We’re seeing right now what happens if this is being taken away by subs going private. Vanilla Google is a shitshow.
I think you struck at the real answer to OP with this, personally. As search engines degrade in pursuit of profits, we’re forced back to the basic model of information exchange, communicating with each other.
The real reason Reddit became such a resource of information was because it was such a central site of information exchange courtesy of its communities. What this means is that to get away from searching a single site and even relying on a single search engine, is that we rely on each other for information as we really always have.
I know that may sound kinda cheesy, but it’s ultimately true. It’s one of the reasons Discord servers are so popular, in some cases almost exceeding wikis.
Yeah, this. Google is a lot crappier than it used to be, but the reason it gives you Reddit search results it that everything is on Reddit. There’s no forums anymore like the old days. Not many that are active anyway.