New on Reddit: Comment search, improved search results relevance, search design
redditinc.com
redditinc.com
I mean this is a straight up blatant lie, every single forum/social site out there has proper search and has for years, I know all of mine do. Most of them you even have image search.
So honest question, how does a multi-million dollar site just not have such basic functionality? Does it not matter?
Better question, and this is something I see time and again, how do sites missing such basic functionality even get any funding to start with? It's just weird. Reddit didn't even have a working user block till recently either.
Aside from that, certainly, a site with its own indexing and awareness of its own internal structure can provide a better search experience than a third-party.
Even old Reddit has the "more from this subreddit" type links now so I imagine it breaks even if you scope your query to the old domain. I noticed most of this appeared after they launched the new Reddit UI, I don't remember having this problem in the past. Note that these are problems they could likely fix so I agree, but any platform can likely build a more context aware search as well.
Disclaimer: I work at Google but don't work on search, opinions are my own, blah blah
Take a recent Reddit post and try on Google:
site:https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u3vzo2/russia_wa... arms
Even subreddit comment search on Google is flimsy due to Reddit not properly exposing the dates, so Google's indexed dates are usually wrong.
does work properly for those comments did index, e.g., https://breezethat.com/?q=%22Putin+is+in+no+shape%22+site%3A...
This is a good move by Reddit (whose search has always been abominable). Many HN'ers have pointed out that they add "reddit" to their Google searches, ex: "<product X> reviews reddit". Why let Google get the ad dollars for that SERP?
Works for me every time. I haven't used Reddit search in 10 years.
I'm at a loss for why anyone would want to read Reddit comments in the first place though. At least on one of the top 100 subs.
I agree there are a lot of crap comments on the bigger default subs (as is the same with any forum) but those are relatively easy to ignore and recognize with experience. Or maybe I just have been using internet forums for too long !
No, it absolutely does not. I have used Google to search Reddit for a string and got no results. That string was present in a Reddit comment open in another tab. It was a few years old so there is very little chance it hadn't been indexed yet.
I mean, I'm one of the first humans, just one of the first 117 billion. Weasel words will get you anywhere!
I always see Salesforce as a huge company with tons of resources whose products struggle frequently.
Would you want to work there? I suspect a lot of great candidates want nothing to do with that company.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/u3oz2x/whats_up_wit...
Well time to continue using "site:www.reddit.com" on Google, then. I find the old search from old.reddit.com to be way better than the newer search (but I haven't tried this newest search linked in the thread).
Or as I like to call it - The Before Covid times. BC. Surely there's no other acronym that uses those two letters. 2018 BC was a good year for me personally
Reddit's engagement model relies on new posts with which to comment on. Being able to easily find previous content means less reposting, and less opportunities to give users a place to engage. A standard, working search function would only hurt reddit's growth metrics.
It's so obvious to the userbase that you have certain users complaining about reposts, or even subreddits that intentionally flag for original content (OC).
By abandoning ethics and building a moat so that those with ethics can't breach the moat.
"In the early days, reddit's community was built up thanks to hundreds of fake profiles created by the site's co-founders, according to Steve Huffman (coincidentally, a reddit co-founder). To make the site look populated and diverse, Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, the other founder, would submit links of their own choosing, each time under a new username."
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...
Or hell - can they not just pay Google and embed a customized version into their site?
The product has gone downhill ever since.
Comment search is nice because it enables users to find interesting content directly in the good niche subreddits.
/r/DarkNetMarkets. Just for discussing DNMs, AFAIK.
/r/shoplifting
/r/stealing
/r/beertrade: for trading beers
/r/gundeals for a bit. Several other gun buying subs are still banned.
/r/fakeid
/r/scotchswap: for trading Scotches
/r/cigarmarket
There's more, too.
The rest of those are just banning discussions of illegal activity. Seems like a reasonable policy to me.
And it's not like there aren't thousands of other subs that discuss illegal activity. They haven't banned all the drug subs, or the hacking subs, etc. Pretty much any illegal activity you can still find subs for it. /r/streetracing, /r/piracy, etc.
FTFY
https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/9m30os/rc...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/bmtdqb/ch...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitPoliticsSays/comments/c66x0w/1_...
And the_donald literally disallowed submissions for months before being banned. When reddit has a sub in their sights, they will find a reason.
/r/mgtow
Wait, huh???
r/startrek, without the underscore, is the official Star Trek community. r/star_trek is an alternative community created because r/startrek is very hostile to anyone who doesn't just slobber over anything Star Trek.
So people would join the alternative community and bring up why they got banned on the official one, or how people were being ridiculous in general on the official one.
But I don't buy that there was any meaningful amount of brigading that was happening. I think the official community, being its pious self, didn't like that people were exposing the mods for being arbitrary and condescending, or that anyone was exposing the likely possibility that they were highly controlled by ViacomCBS.
When it got locked, for all intents and purposes it was banned, if not temporarily.
X: They keep banning my favorite subreddits
Y: Like /r/programming?
X: No, not that one
Y: /r/movies?
X: No
Y: /r/lego?
X: No
Y: /r/nfl?
X: No
Y: Well, which ones?
X: /r/letsmockminoritiesanddisabledpeople
For instance, reddit has a raging hardon for Sinophobia, but Asians in general aren't treated as a protected human class. Incredibly vile, vitriolic content and comments get huge acclaim as long as you frame anything Asian as being tacitly un-American.
Look through the Olympic speed skater threads, or the recent "the result of Chinese lock down policies" video that's just a compilation of Asian people committing suicide, totally unrelated to lock downs.
I get nobody wants to feel like they're surrounded by closet xenophobes and ethnopurists, but all it takes is seeing the collective blind-spot in "remember Russian people are innocent, it's just Putin we hate!" versus "makes sense, Chinese are all freedomless brainwashed moral aliens" to drive home how rotten it is.
This is just one example. Terrible behavior by megamods going unacknowledged and unaddressed weakens the platform, and reddit stoking the tribalism that makes people feel like they're safe and powerful there lends itself to harmful extremism. It's like nationalism is okay as long as it's not white nationalism.
> It's like nationalism is okay as long as it's not white nationalism.
I think the issue is because "white" isn't really a race, nobody is trying to cancel someone proud of their Polish heritage. Black ended up becoming a de-facto race to deal with the descendants of slaves who had their ancestry erased so they're not really comparable. I can only speak to the US but "white nationalism" (hell even "American nationalism") just became the rallying cry for white supremacists. Which sucks for anyone who was benignly proud to be an American but this is just the reality we have to deal with. It's political suicide to run on "I'm racist and proud" anymore so we're surrounded by dogwhistles and people organizing under informal banners and "you know what I mean wink" type policy.
That's pretty much gone in the comments section on r/politics.
The vitriol directed against Russians is often over the top now.
As someone who remembers the hatred towards Russians by the American Right during the 80s that is fairly disturbing to me.
Of course the Hacker News threads which try to play down the consequences of a nuclear exchange with Russia are probably worse.
I don't feel that this makes reddit a great news source or anything - but it does make it palatable entertainment.
Another is subreddit search engines like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22823109
The largest shift in the site was something 12-14 years ago when they redesigned the site to have thumbnails.
This brought people to the site for images instead of content. That was absolutely the original torpedo.
It made the site much more popular, but the quality tanked fast, and has continued since due to having to cater to the lowest common denominator of millions of people.
In the months leading up to the DNC primary, reddit was a battleground between Correct the Record[1] and /r/The_Donald. After the primary, it felt like every post on left-wing subs was inline with the narratives that CTR had been pushing for months. Before the primary, there was quite a bit of resistance to CTR, even from the left-wingers. That evaporated over a single night.
I dug in there one time and found a fascinating obituary for a user on a subreddit for people living with addiction -- full of some touchingly personal and weirdly public stories. Following the user's profile from there taught me about the wild world of the "opiate roll call" subreddit (a thinly veiled Craigslist for drugs) which was at the time flourishing. Fascinating stuff.
These days that awards are free, that's just a list of popular things, not a list of cool things. The major subreddits can have a selfie posted that gets a dozen awards.
the_donald brought a lot of a younger users and white supremacists. I haven't seen a DNC-related reddit conspiracy before though. Certainly no noticeable shift that night.
The whole thing was just internal internet geek culture drama.
What? You haven't noticed social media marketing on reddit?
Maybe - since you have a decade of material to draw from - you could offer a counter-example? I think that would be more conducive to discussion than "don't make such comments."
Do you see how silly this is yet? The comment you are defending is - logically - about as valid as not saying anything at all, which is exactly what they told the OP to do.
However I think that no matter what they (reddit) would have had their hand forced eventually. The site has grown massively since 2015.
and (imo) if they were really wanting to fix this trick they would have just made it so something that was ever stickied couldn't show up on /r/all. Instead they did what (to me) was basically a complete change of their algorithm with very slow changes to placement.
At the very least, there's a distinct lack of self awareness of how small your one opinion is, to the sea of overall opinions. "Has gotten worse" vs "I've grown to like it less" are very different statements; one externalizes the decline, eschews your role and responsibility for your own opinion, and the other owns up to the reality that something my be worse "for you" while getting better for many, many others.
Indeed.
It's especially visible when the effect temporarily abates. After Trump's 2016 election win, for a day or two, it was possible to post something non-leftist to /r/politics without having it be mercilessly downvoted; as if the shills were awaiting orders.
https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/
Search Reddit comments and posts by keyword, user, sub, or all three.
Includes deleted comments and posts.
Your deleted comments even after requesting to be removed from pushshift can still be found in the archives e.g. what https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/ uses
[1] https://imgur.com/a/Gjp7YOA
[2] https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/#{%22author%22:%22trin...
This is why I'm really happy to have GDPR. If this were a European company someone would eventually tear them a new one.
"Reserve the right" is a cheeky choice of words for keeping data that isn't theirs against people's consent.
How is it "your data" if you use their property (reddit.com) to post content on their website? IP and other PII I can understand, as reddit gets that no matter what interaction you do with the website, it makes sense to protect that. But as soon as I make this comment on HN, I don't really expect to "own" this comment anymore, it now belongs to news.ycombinator.com.
I could well be wrong (probably, even :), but my point is that giving permission to use my comments on one site shouldn't automatically give carte blanche to anyone and everyone to use them.
Just because data about me exists doesn't give unlicensed third parties unlimited rights to it.
In Article 17, the GDPR outlines the specific circumstances under which the right to be forgotten applies. An individual has the right to have their personal data erased if:
The personal data is no longer necessary for the purpose an organization originally collected or processed it.
An organization is relying on an individual’s consent as the lawful basis for processing the data and that individual withdraws their consent.
An organization is relying on legitimate interests as its justification for processing an individual’s data, the individual objects to this processing, and there is no overriding legitimate interest for the organization to continue with the processing.
An organization is processing personal data for direct marketing purposes and the individual objects to this processing.
An organization processed an individual’s personal data unlawfully.
An organization must erase personal data in order to comply with a legal ruling or obligation.
An organization has processed a child’s personal data to offer their information society services.
However, an organization’s right to process someone’s data might override their right to be forgotten. Here are the reasons cited in the GDPR that trump the right to erasure:
The data is being used to exercise the right of freedom of expression and information.
The data is being used to comply with a legal ruling or obligation.
The data is being used to perform a task that is being carried out in the public interest or when exercising an organization’s official authority.
The data being processed is necessary for public health purposes and serves in the public interest.
The data being processed is necessary to perform preventative or occupational medicine. This only applies when the data is being processed by a health professional who is subject to a legal obligation of professional secrecy.
The data represents important information that serves the public interest, scientific research, historical research, or statistical purposes and where erasure of the data would likely to impair or halt progress towards the achievement that was the goal of the processing.
The data is being used for the establishment of a legal defense or in the exercise of other legal claims.
I wonder how all of this works out when you're taking public comments from someone else's forum and re-hosting them. Someone who specializes in law or even is more familiar with GDPR and related laws might be able to comment in more detail. I'm just linking the source which attempts to clarify these things, hopefully those are useful.
At least in the past it was a 'non-gold' restriction[1] that you could only set your account to load up to 500 comments automatically.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/3z7xac/can_i_load_all... (could not find an official recent source so things may have changed)
> such as an ability to auto-collapse comments by users[0]
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsecurity/comments/b0a8he/dete...
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/5578-reddit-load-continue-...
For some reason the icons are large, so I tweaked the CSS to make it smaller. Don't recall my exact change though >_>
Video of it in action: https://imgur.com/a/lOansZO
1). Use old.reddit.com, create an account ( it will bait you to enter your email, but its not necessary to proceed. ). Go to subreddits that you want to follow, there are hundreds of niche subreddits which are frankly quite awesome. Subscribe to them. click on r/Home to get the feeds of the subscribed subreddits.
2). Read-only subreddits, privacy focused. Use libredd.it go to niche hobby subreddits and subscribe. Come back to homepage.
There you go the correct ways to navigate through the piles of garbage. Thank me later for your saved time, sanity.
// ==UserScript==
// @name old_reddit
// @description replaces www.reddit with old.reddit
// @match *://www.reddit.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
const url = new URL(window.location.href);
window.location.replace(`https://old.reddit.com${url.pathname}`)e.g, you want to browse for a gift for your SO and you're review-hunting, but you don't want it showing up in your sidebar as a recently viewed thread, or being in your history, or whatever - so you don't sign in. Userscripts/extensions force old.reddit.com regardless.
Not sure if it's just me, but that setting seems to frequently get reset, as I tick that box maybe once a week/two weeks or something, but I keep getting sent to the new reddit at one point. Maybe I accidentally access new.reddit.com which forces the new layout and then reset the setting?
In any case, I'm giving one of the new -> old redirection extensions a try now instead.
It doesn't apply to mobile but IMHO the new site is slightly less terrible on mobile than the old one anyways so that's my preference.
Just don't
> there are hundreds of niche subreddits which are frankly quite awesome
They are condoning reddit by continuing to use it
----
There's another comment that points out that reddit screws up search engines results in order to get more front page hits.
Just how long will it need to be pointed out that platforms are evil, and anti-Web, and you should be shunned for using them ?
(I had some hope for reddit myself - that it would not fall to the same issues somehow, but that hope is long gone now...)
Reddit is the easiest free way, but you pay the price in the end, and it's very high.
Reddit of course has its issues but by working through and around them it's still an amazing site - not because of its features or politics but because of the discussions and communities i.e. users of the site. The default subreddits are generally awful though.
I use the RES extension on my PC and the Reddit Sync app on my phone and would recommend both.
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It occasionally hits the wrong people, but it's the only way to make twitter usable for me. It's not my failing.
It's of course all against the twitter rules, but twitter moderation is horrible and these people have also learned to speak in code. It's not "kill yourself" anymore, it's "join the 41%".
The catch is that both of those usage modes are pretty much at the mercy of Reddit Inc., which could decide to "deprecate" them at any time they see fit. And given that Reddit Inc. seems to be planning an IPO, I imagine that those will both be on the chopping block sooner rather than later.
I didn't want or appreciate some of those features anyway. Old Reddit with RES pretty much feels feature-complete to me. In some sense it's also refreshing to use a popular social media UI that isn't going through constant redesigns and tweaks.
Then if you’d like you could just view said thread as a tree but it’s still a single threaded comment thread.
My problem with trees is that unless expanded and then flattened finding the newest relevant comments is more trouble than it’s worth.
After a few hundred I personally don’t bother. great example is the musk Twitter thread. Good luck finding the globally newest comment.
Not to mention with threads you waste time reading things over and over again.
It would be analogous to when people quote entire paragraphs in a forum post to add their 1 sentence reply (which always bothered me for reasons I've never come to terms with). Once I found reddit, I really appreciated the threaded discussion.
As for threaded, I like how StackOverflow handles this. You have separate top level answers, but underneath that is flat comments that can be filtered a tad for quality or totally unwrapped. That system works very well.
Mostly science and business literature adults. Other platforms have wider demographics.
AWS also offers some high memory machines with up to 24TB of ram in some locations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL
Ingres and Postgres/PostgreSQL.
I still don't know /why/ some people say PostGres. I've seen it a few times, on HN and elsewhere, but its wrong isn't it?
> Experience with Solr or similar search technologies.
So I'm guessing that's most of it. Which makes sense given Full Text Search is the point of Solr/Lucene!
I guess this is better than nothing, but you can't sort by time. There seems to be no sorting/filtering whatsoever.
The modding to craft a narrative and ban dissenting right think is so pervasive (and even the admins banning individual wrongthink comments) that what you see on the site doesn't represent what people posted.
It's toxic beyond repair.
It's amazing that reddit survived its redesign, I wish they would rollback. I'm also curious about how many users still use the old design.
If they remove the old design, I would obviously not use reddit anymore, and I don't know if there are viable frontends that would allow me to login.
I can't see anything replacing Reddit any time soon, though.
It’s probably one of the best examples of a company ignoring the vocal minority in order to succeed.
there's clearly pump & dump scams happening here. but its impossible to regulate and prove (VPN).
there will come a point where you just can't straight up trust what somebody says anymore on reddit, unless there's some sort of consensus...but even that can be manipulated.
if you go to regional subreddits like r/japan or r/korea, you will notice its not even natives jumping on like r/singapore, its mostly expats and surprisingly quite very prejudiced and biased. You would think people exploring other cultures to be open minded, its not in these circles, its an echo chamber for whatever demographic it represents.
all in all, reddit as a product and value is as good as 4chan. there's no defense or nuanced balanced views with active moderation like you will find on HN.
Hackernews, with its current moderation, that can possibly allow "subreddits" would be far more valuable for me. But lately I also see that HN is not immune from astroturfing and manipulation. It's not hard to see this, you have accounts that aren't active suddenly becoming activated in a particular thread (recent example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31015328) I suspect these are run by the same person trying to "win" or feels they have something to lose.
tldr: Text based, anonymous discussion platforms are problematic and rife with manipulation and unreliable trust vectors and don't see any good solutions