On mobile you can’t read reddit comment threads unless you install their official app. I hate that Google surfaces reddit threads since the site itself often doesn’t contain the information indexed by the search.

That's not true, for me at least. I use mobile browser reddit and can see comment threads just fine.

Firefox > Menu > Desktop Site

Check the settings of your Reddit client app. I set mine to open links from reddit.com and old.reddit.com. So when I click on a search result, it pulls up the page in the app.

Oh great - I didn't realise Apollo could open reddit links on mobile! Fantastic - for the remaining days while apollo works at all. Sigh.

Count me as another person who frequently adds site:reddit.com to my google searches. I realize there's a lot of astroturfing that goes on there, but it's still useful when I want to get a pulse from real people.

Also count me as another person who abhors the "new" UI. Every once in a while I get bounced out of the old UI and I don't know how people do it. The old UI isn't my perfect UI but it's darn near close to it.

Astroturfing is the least of the problems; most threads are filled with fake experts (of a very specific demographic - usually very young, american, male, etc) projecting.

This is fine if you consciously remember this while browsing, but when you start to believe that you can get a pulse from "real people" on Reddit, you've already lost the game. Remember: to even post a comment on Reddit already puts you in a niche group of people who use Reddit.

This becomes self-reinforcing as well, everyone else will feel alienated even if they do get over the hurdle of commenting, while those who fit the aforementioned mold will feel at home. Can't get much of a pulse, unless you specifically want to know what a very certain demographic feels once you filter out all the fanboyism and astroturfing.

It's a good thing we don't have any of this foolishness on Hacker News! /s

We have plenty of diversity here. We have young, American, and male folks for instance. Even web developers if you need more diversity than that.

Yes, HN also shares those problems. The upside is I don't see many people proclaiming to add HN to their google searches to find the pulse or whatever it may be, on the contrary it seems many come here just to debate.

Which is the bigger problem, someone coming to a niche place to debate, or someone who believes adding reddit to their google searches is going to provide them with better insight? I'd say the latter: they aren't conscious of the BS being pushed onto them.

Also kind of funny your comment is an exact demonstration of what I mean, that self-reinforcing style of "comedy" coupled with a nonsensical assumption.

Redditors are full of shit. So often, I’ll see a question where I actually know the answer, and the most popular responses are dead wrong.

I would posit 'was' one of the most useful sites.

Like OP said there's certainly niche subreddits.

What grew Reddit for me was the informed comments that were generally related to the discussion and often brought more light to a topic than the posted article.

With voices leaving Reddit the point or appeal of it is gone. For me at least.

I've been on Reddit for over 10 years. It's a search engine for me now, I've simply aged out of most of the discussions on there. I'm fine with that, because it's still useful for search queries like "Things to do in [city_name]".

Its sorta funny, when I'm looking for opinions on a new tech stack or a language comparison, I add the "hackernews" at the end of my query.

> With Google search nearing total uselessness for local information, using "site:reddit.com" is almost obligatory.

Only if you use Google to search! ;)