Reddit strike worsens Google results – Apparata

Google users know that adding the word “reddit” to the query works wonders for avoiding landing on an SEO company catch page. But sadly, the Reddit strike puts an end to this.

What is Reddit?

Most of you have landed on Reddit at some point, looking for the answer to a technical question. Reddit is the largest forum in the world and contains thousands of topics, all bundled together as a subreddit. For example, technology-related topics can be found on https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/. These subreddits are more or less independent sites, run by volunteers. These check whether mail complies with the rules and whether, for example, no illegal things are posted. Reddit also has fairly strict internal rules, for example a ban on offending protected groups.

Smart revenue model

Reddit’s revenue model is very smart. At least, smart for the owners of Reddit. Users and Reddit’s moderators provide a lot of content, Reddit puts ads in between and actually they don’t have to do much, except control the moderators. As long as the advertising market thrived, Reddit made a lot of money from this.

A popular site with a lot of visitors, such as Reddit, naturally also entails the necessary costs. Consider, for example, the enormous data traffic and the storage of enormous amounts of information. And the large server park that it requires. These costs must be earned back, in Reddit’s business model this is done through advertisements.

Why the Reddit Strike?

Now the ad market has come to a standstill, also because more and more Redditors use adblockers. So Reddit had to look for other sources of income. That is why a strike has broken out. Because Reddit wants everyone who has access to Reddit’s API, such as builders of apps that make Reddit more accessible, to pay 20 million a year. The most popular independent Reddit app, Apollo, cannot afford this huge amount and has therefore announced that it will stop before July 1, when the new rates will take effect.

In solidarity with Apollo and other Reddit app makers, several thousand moderators have shut down their subreddit. A Reddit strike.

Reddit strike continues

Meanwhile, Reddit’s owners are keeping their cool. They think the moderators of the popular striking subreddits can’t keep their subreddit closed forever and will therefore return one by one.

This in turn inspires some ethical questions. To what extent does competition still work for quasi-monopolists such as Reddit, Facebook and Twitter? Does the content on Reddit belong to Reddit or the internet users who published it? Does Reddit have the right to milk the site to the max, if most of the work is done voluntarily and for free by Rddditors and moderators?

Reddit owners probable winner

For now, it seems that the confrontation is turning into a brutal power struggle, in which the owners of Reddit have the strongest credentials. Reddit has taken the subreddit’s data hostage. So the subreddits can’t defect to a Reddit competitor. Also, the moderators of the subreddit can be dropped. Reddit management can give the moderation rights of a popular subreddit to someone else through a server intervention and reopen it. In the next few years, Reddit may also have human moderators taken over by Ai.

Implications for Google

Many users add the term “reddit” to their search. Reddit is less prone to link spam than the rest of the internet, as moderators rigorously remove most spam links. This means that it increases the chance that you get reliable results. With much of Reddit blacked out,