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Comment by SpacePortKnight | Hacker News Reader

I noticed this too when I was trying to search for local opinions like affordable clothing in netherlands and for general recommendations like cloud storage with execellent file management.

Without reddit, outdated generic blogs with affliate links show up. They are just advertisement in disguise and not the genuine opinions which I'm looking for.

In a way this shows the value of Reddit. Even with their awful UI and app, their users seems to provide the most value to search queries.

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I search for reviews of DIY tools and all Google shows me are review sites that are just thinly veiled affiliate link farms. I even read a post somewhere about a guy boasting he has SEO optimized his review sites to show up at the top of google searches and he makes a bundle on all the Amazon affiliate links people follow.

For me, the solution is not Reddit but Youtube - luckily, Google can now link you directly to the point in the video that matters otherwise videos are not random searchable, and I haven't seen all videos have text transcripts you can search through.

Video based solutions for many things are deeply ineffectual as they'll become outdated rapidly and are difficult to re-edit to add in missing context following publication

I think affiliate deals should be banned. I hate it that much. Whilst you’re at it, van advertisement without consent. You can use the kids argument if necessary.

So you want to live in a world where only companies with massive ad budgets breakthrough to end users? The ad empire only strengthens media/big app lock in.

I want the ads to be clearly labelled and only accessible when I've asked for them. Wasn't that the idea of Google AdWords? Show people results ranked by relevance, and insert a few related sponsored products at the beginning with a different presentation.

Let's be honest, that's already happening anyway.

A lot of these sites are probably already breaking FTC rules.

If one runs an affiliate link blog they're supposed to disclose that relationship when they show the links (and in a way that the reader won't easily miss it). [1]

It was a big thing in video game streaming that even stuff like free game codes given to content creators can require something like #ad or #sponsored put in the stream title.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...

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