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 use a Firefox addon that redirects reddit pages to archive.org versions. I’m considering reposting any thread I visit that way on Lemmy.
c/techsupport could beat Reddit if enough people make content
Searches testicular pain on tech support
Seems like they just don’t have enough content-making people yet. :(
your testicles doesnt have wifi yet to be in tech support
How do I fix this?
Adding WiFi to them and then reporting your problems
Have you tried turning it off and on?
I have not. Probably would just stop at the off part though.
Oh that’s pretty neat, a way to not give traffic going forward!
I need that shit, give me it
This is amazing. Thank you!
I stopped using Google because of this specific reason.
Kagi, hands down, is by far the best search engine I’ve ever used (next to Neeva, which got bought and shut down) without looking for Reddit results all the time.
Just simple searches like “Best gaming headphones” or “Realtek Driver Download” and comparing them with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Startpage, etc. shows how the quality of the results are far superior.
And you can directly define, which sites you’d like to see higher / more results of or less - or even completely block or pin them to the top.
Also, it also shows you directly, before visiting a site, in colors if a site has a very high number of ads and/or trackers.
And they support for power users custom CSS to adjust everything, URL rewrites (e.g. change all Reddit URLs to old.reddit or to automatically open libreddit or archive.org versions), DDG and custom bangs, and much more.
Lastly, I created a so-called “Lens”, which allows me to search Lemmy / Kbin content only (also still have one for Reddit).
Meaning with one click, it shows me results from only sites or keywords I’ve defined - see image.Very satisfied with it, can only recommend.
(copied from another thread I replied to)
my first instinct was “oh great another site that makes me create an account” but I have to say that feature-set looks impressive.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
trying it, sounds awesome
I think it’s going to be really hard to break my Google/ Reddit search habits. I really appreciate your suggestion here as I think this might be very helpful in making that clean break.
Visiting for basic information now and again isn’t going to provide a ton for them. As long as you are not providing new content or doom scrolling it’s fine IMO.
This has been my mindset as well. This is an awkward phase where Reddit alternatives are still being built out and millions of people are trying to find their home. Once the dust settles and communities build up, I hope to use the fediverse as I did site:reddit.com.
But for now, I think its okay to get information from reddit and bounce right after. Depending on what you’re looking for, ChatGPT does seem to be a decent alternative to both Google and Reddit at the same time, though.
ChatGPT does seem to be a decent alternative to both Google and Reddit at the same time, though.
A detail to remember with this, however, is that it’s not a search engine, but a robust text composition/“generation” tool. I recognize that it does tend to get certain info correct rather consistently, but it’s both error-prone and a basic misuse of it to use it for research imo.
Besides, as long as you’re using adblock, you’re already limiting what they get from you anyway.
Pi-Hole and Ublock running here!
We can stop relying on Reddit with c/techsupport
I would absolutely never use a single generic community or source when gathering information for a specific issue on a specific topic.
Not yet but in the future it would be nice typing something Lemmy instead of something Reddit
Absolutely how I feel. I will not generate one more byte of content for them but if I can’t find what i’m looking for elsewhere I will use them as a read-only resource. If I have a question I need to ask I’m hoping Lemmy will be the place I can do that
A few things come to mind that I don’t think have been mentioned:
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libreddit - a private front-end for Reddit that should avoid your traffic monetizing Reddit
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Old.Reddit + uBlock - should similarly help avoid monetization by blocking ads
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Ask your question on the threadiverse! - probably not as convenient as a google search but gotta start building an alternative knowledge base somewhere
The first two obviously won’t help with private subreddits, more to keep Reddit from making money by hoarding all of our data. It’s going to be a rough transition for many of us.
I recommend c/techsupport to stop relying on Reddit even in its archived version
Teddit.net is also a good option, as it just mirrors reddit but doesn’t give them any money.
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I’m not sure if there is a good solution. We’re just in the soup. Part of the mess that’s happening is because Reddit can be so good at giving proper answers. In my experience, at least in smaller communities, you have people that care and are curious.
So your question about a DAC is answered by someone who loves audio and bitrates and was into it for months or years before you even knew you’d have the question.
To fix trash search, AI is just chewing up all those old answers in the hope that it’ll be as “smart” about rowing as the woman on the subreddit who rowed for 10 years and coached for 5 and gave thoughtful answers to some college kid.
We’re in the middle of a… a something. And everything will just be shittier for a minute. The algorithms will feast on what’s buried in Reddit and become “smart” enough to give a passable answer, but then we run into the issue of new “smarts”… I don’t think AI will be able to generate new “smart” of any value. It’ll need to be trained by people and who knows if there will be dedicated people pouring info into a new repository.
Part of the mess that’s happening is because Reddit can be so good at giving proper answers. In my experience, at least in smaller communities, you have people that care and are curious.
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.
ChatGPT
Yup, it read most Reddit content. If not, also good at fishing content
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I’m just waiting for someone to take one of the torrents and create a static pre-reddit with all the old info, and we can all pick up anew here. Host it on Tor, donations to cover server costs, done, and Reddit is out and nothing of value was lost.
Bing Chat. It is ChatGPT-4 with internet access. It shows you the sources so you can verify the results.
This. The last 3 recipes I’ve cooked from GPT have been banger. It knows salt fat acid heat and and pretty much always balances shit.
Who would have thought SkyNet was such a good cook.
if I coded it I would just tell it to put bacon on everything
I just tried to use it but it looks like I have to download Edge. Is there any other way to use it?
Vivaldi has a function that enables Bing Chat with their browser:
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-on-desktop-6-1/It should also be possible to change your User-Agent string like they do.
Firefox has an extension to allow Bing Chat.
You’ll find this helpful: https://fedi-search.com/
Best case scenario is having subs entirely backed up on Lenny. Worst case we can still access cashed pages right now but i dont know if these exist permanently or not.
archive.org should have many pages snapshotted, but there’s no guarantee.
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This isn’t answering the actual question, which is how to substitute for the fact that including reddit explicitly was often one of the only ways to get good results. (Especially to get results that aren’t just shitty collated/auto-generated “answer” websites, which are like half of my results sometimes these days)
If you just want to hide Reddit hits, you could use an addon like Hide or Highlight Search Engine Results. I use it to hide results from Pinterest and Elder Scrolls wiki, while highlights those from UESP, for example.
I can answer that, it’s the rolypoly armor
We can use c/techsupport + site:lemmy.world for now
Before Reddit became the place to find specific niche information. Usenet was the place to find the specific niche information as Reddit continues it’s death spiral somewhere else will become the place to go.
This is the same as stack overflow
c/techsupport is fedetated in case stack overflow does something
Google and Reddit are both evil - don’t do it!
I use SearXNG and a re-director, so that results via Reddit come through another portal (libreddit - extension available for Firefox).
Thats why c/techsupport is useful
