Over 8,000 subreddits have gone dark to protest Reddit’s upcoming API changes, and it’s shown me just how much I rely on Reddit to find useful, human-sounding information in my Google search results.
With Google’s generally poor search results nowadays, appending “reddit” has long been the default way I search for almost anything (and no, I’m not ready to get my info from an AI chatbot, either). But given the sheer volume of subreddits that are currently unavailable — including some of the most-subscribed subreddits — clicking through many Reddit links in search results takes me to a message saying the subreddit is private.
And even if you don’t rely on the Reddit trick like I do, Reddit links often show up at the top of search results...