Reddit Continues to Devolve Into Google's Pet

Watching Google and Reddit’s relationship is like a child transfixed by a spinning coin on a hardwood table. Eventually, that coin will fall, the effects of gravity inescapable even by the most dazzling displays. The child knows this, even if she believes it won’t ever stop. What that child really wants to know is what side of the coin will fall face down. 

Google and Reddit’s grown reliance on each other is a double edged sword for both companies. Reddit provides “human” responses to any number of queries that pull people to Google Search. The more that Google can surface Reddit results that seemingly hyper-target the most unique of queries, the more people bring queries to Google, the higher advertising rates Google can demand. The search giant started positioning Reddit as a more authoritative source, due to the increase in people adding a “reddit” appendage to their searches. Trying to browse Reddit for a specific inquiry is a nightmare thanks to poor upkeep and lack of focus on its own internal search tool, but Google has solved that problem for Reddit. 

Reddit, naturally, benefits from all of the traffic Google sends its way, which allows more people to discover or spend time on the platform, increasing overall advertising revenue. Google is such a large component of Reddit’s business that Reddit’s own S-1 filing cites changing relationships with Google as a major risk component. Reddit doesn’t have to find content to pull from, nor does it have to suggest new topics for people to talk about. They just do — and because they either pull from personal experience (ex: chronic illnesses) or from their own expertise (ex: carpenters and electricians), Google trusts the results. So long as people are curious, and Google directs to Reddit, the forum behemoth wins. 

Except when your business is defined by what Google wants, you start to make changes to the community that inevitably impact what Reddit needs. Visibility, for example. One of Reddit’s quintessential advantageous features when it first launched was sovereignty. Moderators set the rules for subreddits, and those subreddits could exist as open spheres for lurkers to browse or they could operate as private clubhouses. This is apparently no longer the case. As The Verge reports, "Reddit is giving its staff a lot more power over the communities on its platform." As of last week, "Reddit moderators will not be able to change if their subreddit is public or private without first submitting a request to a Reddit admin," The Verge reports. "The policy applies to adjusting all community types, meaning moderators will have to request to make a switch from safe for work to not safe for work, too."

This comes after a long tumultuous riff between Reddit and it's users. When Reddit started making changes to its API practices last year, causing some of the most beloved communities to go dark on the platform, many subreddits protested by going dark. They switched from public to private. It was a show of agency that empowered Reddit’s growth in the first place. In an attempt to give the benefit of the doubt to Reddit’s team, concerns may have stemmed from not having visibility into content on those subreddits and worries over harmful content being spread. But precedent dictates that Reddit really doesn’t care about what people are posting — this is the site that let subreddits like r/WatchPeopleDie and r/BeatingWomen exist for years despite criticism from public safety watch groups. 

Except when your business is defined by what Google wants, you start to make changes to the community that inevitably impact what Reddit needs.

No, the real problem with sites going dark following Google’s algorithm changes is Google can’t surface those subreddits as easily or in an helpful way. Those typing in queries are sent to subreddits that are locked, creating frustration and bouncing the original question haver to another site. This prevents more non-Redditors from stumbling onto the site, therefore impacting advertising revenue for Reddit. And for Google which, again, changed its feed to surface more Reddit posts because of the increased appendage use in queries, this impacts the “quality” of search results for Google users. It’s not a cultural problem. It’s not a safety concern. It’s a shared revenue red flag, and when Google is indirectly investing in your business (traffic referral), you can’t listen to your community so much as you have to abide by the concerns of self-interested giants. 

We have to examine the repercussions of these decisions by studying the data. Traffic to Reddit has increased by nearly 40% year-over-year following Google’s change. Reddit reported a 41% increase in advertising revenue in Q2. Advertising revenues for Reddit in the U.S. will grow by an estimated 28% this year, marking the fastest growth in advertising revenues outside of TikTok, according to eMarketer. From Google’s perspective, advertising revenue increased by 14% to north of $46 billion year over year. Whether or not we like it, whether or not we think it’s bad for society (and I can’t overstate just how bad the algorithmic changes are), the fact is that Google and Reddit are benefiting from this relationship. 

For now. See, the problem with removing sovereignty, the very thing you promised the free laborers posting threads and content that Google then pulls from, is you eventually run the risk of those highly organized groups taking a stand through aggressive abandonment. A top post on r/Technology, a subreddit with more than 17 million members, summarizes this philosophy best: “Cease utilizing the site 100%,  and remove any possibility of ad revenue en masse, while looping in solidarity of others offline to do the same.” This won’t result in Reddit necessarily changing its strategies, nor will tens of millions of people suddenly stop using Reddit. It’s a place of friendship, habit, and leisure. It’s the type of network effect that propelled Meta to a billion dollar valuation in 2012. Not to mention that Google surfacing posts for lurkers may result in people signing up to the site to post a singular question or participate in a singular thread — not much of an effect on Reddit long term, but enough “new” engagement en masse to impress Google partners and advertisers. 

Operating by the arrogant notion, however, that people will remain hostage to a singular platform simply because that’s where they once were is the danger that companies like Reddit run into. As my former boss and friend, Nilay Patel, once said: websites die. Companies go under. The idea of permanence in our lives is a fallacy. New technology, new trends, and new generations create their own momentum and habits. Alienating and frustrating your core group in the name of seeking out profit at the detriment of your actual product — the people posting roughly more than 470 million posts a year, according to Statista — will eventually sour the product to the point of self-destruction. 

The overarching question that Posting Nexus digs into is hidden incentives and disincentive structures that impact how we operate on the internet and what we pay attention to. For example: Reddit going public. Considering that Reddit isn’t a non-profit, the goal was always to grow. When Reddit went public, however, the company now faced the insatiable demands of growth as an end state. It’s the philosophy that guides modern capitalism. You aren’t ever profitable enough. You aren’t ever big enough. You’re never efficient enough. It’s why a company’s stock can tank in the minutes after an earnings release is published: even if the quarter beat records, guidance on a slower quarter ahead turns everything tipsy turvy. You’re only as good as your next three months. Consistent growth, even if it’s microscopic in measurement, is the end state, meaning that there is never an end. We call this infinity. But the problem is that growth for companies comes from mining resources — including attention — is that it’s inherently finite. As I wrote last week about WordPress’ fight with WP Engine:

A significant driver of these problems, as demonstrated by the philosophical move away from open sourcing to making everything extremely private and confidential, is defining the end state as a growth state. Trying to create an end state that is defined by growth doesn’t work when the resources being pulled on are finite. Even things we thought were infinite — the level of demand for user generated content, entertainment, and interactive experiences — are finite. They become smaller and smaller percentages of our day as we split time across multiple devices to satiate multiple needs. But what works for the consumer doesn’t work for the company trying to take those finite moments and turn them into empires. 

In order to keep shareholders happy — the only thing that Reddit has to do as a company is abide by fiduciary duties, and it has a fiduciary duty to grow — executives may need to remove features (such as being able to make a public forum private) and create new revenue structures (such as rumored paywalls) to ensure that growth continues. By ignoring the people who turn the website into one of the most Googled appendages over the last decade, however, user growth threatens to plateau, impacting its value to Google and its ability to generate stronger advertising revenue each quarter. It’s a catch-22. Therefore, removing digital autonomy, or individual user agency, in the name of a better quarter isn’t just ill-advised, it’s downright risky. 

We don’t know precisely how the next age of the internet will appear. There are some big bets from some extremely smart people. Smart glasses. Generative AI. The Metaverse. Some of this may happen. None of it may happen. But the internet is changing, in large part because of technological innovation and government regulation. The battle between Google and the federal government right now over advertising monopolization, for example, could completely rewrite the economics of the internet as we currently know it. New apps appear all the time to take away people’s attention (like TikTok), and the very premise of search may change with new attempts at better browsers, like Anthropic. Bing has actually seen an increase of more than 50% in traffic since implementing OpenAI technology, while Google has seen a slight degradation in usage because of user unhappiness. 

“Cease utilizing the site 100%,  and remove any possibility of ad revenue en masse, while looping in solidarity of others offline to do the same.”

Nothing is permanent. The only strategy companies should have is working with their users — their product — to ensure they can remain a stable part of a changing landscape for as long as possible. Google may pay Reddit’s bills, but it’s the Redditors that Google wants access to, and they don’t care about Reddit’s shareholders. Although Reddit’s shareholders should absolutely care about them. Accepting what is as what will always be is a fool’s errand that not even the Roman emperors took for granted. And believe me, modern day C-suite executives are no Marcus Aurelius.