I've been linking this text fairly often, but I think that it's worth a read. People might be focusing on the blackout but that's just the "now" - with or without blackouts, Reddit is a ticking bomb bound to eventually explode, and all the information there will be lost when it does.

And the fact that people have been relying on Reddit to look for information shows even deeper issues, not just with Reddit but the internet. Let's see...

1. Google monopoly over the search market. Why would it need to make its product better, if you're still going to use it?
2. Corporations always trying to prevent you from reaching the best result (because it won't lead you to their product), and engaging on an arms race through search engine optimisation. That's why people did that "reddit" trick.
3. The encroachment of the ad industry into the internet. Oh look, I found the content that I wanted... no wait it's another ad. Move on...
4. Governments more often pandering to corporations than defending the best interests of their taxpayers, and the legislation on what's allowed or disallowed on the internet suffering in result of that.
5. Reddit monopoly over discussions.
6. People sharing info in Reddit instead of through more resilient forms of digital media, as shown in the link.

Seems unrelated to open source?

I already encountered this a few times while searching for something specific. Even though the protests are understandable it makes it so much harder to find information.

I noticed it myself too! Hopefully we can get a good way to search through the internet archive backup of reddit people are building soon, or at least get those posts pushed out through the fediverse so people can see them.

I think it would be more accurate to say that Google has gotten a lot worse over time, and removing the crutch of reddit results is making that suddenly more obvious. Google results mostly suck, but you can sometimes find what you're actually looking for on reddit.

Today I got a feeling of that!