When they are just dishonest, saying that it's updated today or recently using a script is just as easy.

They just lie. I was trying to find out why VLC stopped working for me a few months ago [0] and landed in a terrible site where they suggested to do a lot of cargo cult driver updating and whatnot. A few "comments" thanked the author for the comprehensive (and totally fake) information.

This kind of crap seems to be winning. My other recent quest, finding a uni site about consciusness, psychedelia, emerson and 60s music, that I used to visit 20 years ago, was also unsuccessful.

[0] https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/25976

(nobody assigned)

On that note, Reddit seems to be faking their last modified date metadata for SEO purposes. I’ve seen many old threads (where all the comments are 5 years old with no edits) show up in my Google search results with today’s date below the link. This coincided with and is likely related to the removal of automatic thread archiving 4 months ago.

This also signals an end game, where the last vestiges of true improved, customer facing improvements are over.

With nothing left, one delves into short term growth numbers.

Because of this, some indexes may de-stress reddit by date search, and, by freshness. And some end users will click, become annoyed more often, and stop clicking on reddit links.

They clearly have nothing left, and no other idea how to improve reddit. They have signaled they are well past peak growth.

I understand you. I've noticed this kind of behavior on some review sites. They put the latest month in the title but who knows when did they actually update it?