I went searching for something today and instinctually clicked on a reddit link. Fortunately the sub was dark for the protest anyway, but it’s crazy how ingrained in me it is to go to reddit for everything.
Unfortunately now we’re going to have to get used to clicking on those clickbait tech articles like “TOP 10 FACEBOOK ALTERNATIVES 2023” to find information, and weed out the crappy blogs.
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I feel like we need a Redditor’s Anonymous community lol.
Hi I’m Swintoodles and I’ve tried to open reddit 3 times this morning. The site is sparse, so I only browsed for 20 minutes, but I know I can get better!
I’m using a pi-hole on my network and I added reddit to the ‘blocked list’ to cut down on myself clicking the links. I should find a way to filter out the links from my search results easily, but this works for now.
It doesn’t help the fact that depending of the question, every single answer ends up being only on reddit and nowhere else.
This is one of the problems for me. I frequently search tech issues and more often than not, a lot of links are from Reddit.
Really specific issues are more often than not only found in reddit, and that’s not even all, for me at least; a lot of those answers in reddit are short and to the point. Sometimes you search for the solution of a problem and find posts on websites filled with irrelevant information that you don’t really have the time/patience to read. . .
Agree. Here’s hoping that eventually we shall see the same amount and quality of information in the fediverse.
I have this problem because Google hasn’t been as good the past few years unless I append “reddit” to my search. During all of this going on, I’ve been trying to be diligent about viewing the cached version instead, but it’s not always available.
It’ll take time. I think eventually we’ll have enough knowledge on Reddit alternatives like Lemmy where we can add “lemmy” to our search strings instead of “reddit”.
The problem with that is, that not all instances use “Lemmy” or even “feddit” in the URL.
Hopefully search engines can eventually work around that.
Sparks an idea, I briefly remember google or some search engine letting you search for forums, a browser extension which did this for a few different larger forums and then aggregated the results could yield a similar result.
I think the one you’re looking for is kagi.com!
I really like kagi and use the Orion browser. But after trialing a month’s subscription, I just couldn’t justify the additional cost. Their lowest tier just doesn’t have enough search’s for my monthly usage. It does put into perspective how many pointless searches one can do when searches are ‘free’. Each time one conducts a search, you are spinning up a machine somewhere in the world, multiply that by X and all that wasted resource becomes clear.
I think Brave search goggles can do exactly that
We all have to do our part to talk about the products and services we use here on Lemmy. Does anyone know of a good community similar to /r/buyitforlife on the fediverse?
We’re all in rehab 😐
Honestly I’m trying to retrain my brain to type beehaw instead of reddit as a reflex when I open a new tab. Beehaw is literally my rehab
I had to move Sync off the homepage of my phone to avoid the muscle memory of just clicking it mindlessly. I have caught myself once or twice wanting to type it into the URL.
I was going to ask in a full post, but as a comment on this topic would be better: what kind of modifiers would we type in when we want to narrow a web search scope to the fediverse? Like, it’s easy to just add ‘reddit’ to any query, that instantly cuts out all the BS. Hoping there’s some magic keyword in the metadata in the ActivityPub guts.
Someone feel free to start a full post on this, if you figure it’s warranted.
This is a very good question - when I’m troubleshooting things my default search pattern is: “<problem> 2023 reddit”, because 99% of the other search results are pure garbage.
Idk how helpful this is, but LibRedirect basically redirects all reddit links (and other websites like youtube, twitter, tiktok) in your browser to a privacy front-end that doesn’t do any tracking or ads or things like that which is better than using the official reddit site.
Redirector is another option for this. It’s a generic tool so it doesn’t have baked in rules, you have to specify your own. I use
^https://(old\\.|www\\.)?reddit.com/r/(.*)for the source pattern andhttps://your-favorite-libreddit-instance/r/$2as the destination.
Unfortunately now we’re going to have to get used to clicking on those clickbait tech articles like “TOP 10 FACEBOOK ALTERNATIVES 2023” to find information, and weed out the crappy blogs.
So… exactly what other users submitting content had to do previously. Unless you just lurk and don’t submit anything.
Fr, it is very hard to break. I instinctively add “reddit” to the end of every search.
This speaks to how bad Google has gotten IMO - I do it too.
Yup
After the subreddits go un-dark I will probably still use this for searching until there’s a LLM set-up to “replace” google searching (which Bing is Still Not, imo).
Unrelated but we have similar usernames :-)
Hahaha that is amazing! I was going to go for my cryptic variation of ‘1bluxjay’ only to realize that I can have the actual username. Been a long time since I’ve been able to do that.
I know, it’s so much harder to find answers to anything past very simple answers with Google these days. After the blackout, I’ll probably do far less jumping straight to Reddit, but I feel like it’s still going to be unavoidable sometimes.
Yeah, even if I quit using reddit as a community tool the information value is huge. When something breaks on a niche subject they can be the only easy to find source.
You don’t really have to quit cold turkey. When I stopped using Digg I’d go back now and then but Reddit had become my go to. I phased it out over a little less than a month.
ChatGPT can be a handy way to get certain information as well.
It can be. It just also can be a handy way to get pure misinformation really convincingly. (I guess that’s still not that different than Reddit lol)
Came here to say the same. I’ve replaced google searches with BingAI prompts and get what I need, AD free, just about every time.
I simply replaced the Reddit Sync shortcut with Jerboa on my phone, works wonders for me :) just need to find a few good replacement communities
I keep opening Relay today and immediately quitting. Anyone use an app for this? Maybe just need to replace the app location with a new app.
That’s exactly what I did. I moved my reddit app elsewhere and put Jerboa in its place. Now when I instinctually click, I get confused for a minute as I look at Lemmy and then sigh in relief and start browsing lol. Brains take so much work to adjust to change.
Jeroba if you’re on Android. Can’t remember the Apple one
I deleted the RIF icon from my main phone screen so I wouldn’t instinctively click on it. That void feels real weird.
I deleted RIF from its spot after 11 years and put Jerboa in the spot. Those are big shoes to fill.
My browser has an option to turn sites into a progressive web app, so I have been using those for fediverse sites and put them where RIF used to be on my home screen.
Yeah I replaced the Relay icon with Jerboa.
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Today, I’ve spent all the time I would ordinarily waste on reddit trying to figure out Lemmy instead. It’s been fun! Honestly refreshing.
When Twitter seemed like it was going to suddenly implode last November (as opposed to the slow, slow death it opted for instead), I tried to hop onto Mastodon along with everyone else. My experience was bad. It was too slow. Too slow to use. Lemmy has been a great experience in comparison.
