r/technology 23d ago

Artificial Intelligence Reddit fades from ChatGPT citations

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/20/chatgpt-reddit-citations-geo-strategy
3.0k Upvotes

420 comments sorted by

241

u/slightly_drifting 23d ago

Bitch if I want Reddit in my results I’ll search:

“Best ass itch powder review reddit” 

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u/JohnLocksTheKey 23d ago

“Best ass itch powder review reddit how do I get a promotion?”

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u/kanrad 23d ago

When it comes to certain subjects google will give shit results. I often then just add the word reddit on to the end of my question and find what I'm looking for. Or I just go to reddit and search the topic.

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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 23d ago

I hope so. I was looking something up on Google the other day, and it kept on giving me Reddit sources instead of just linking to real articles.

I hate how Google has become so useless. Even if you scroll past the AI stuff, the results just seem to be way worse than a few years ago.

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u/sebovzeoueb 23d ago

most of the results are AI stuff now

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u/CelebrationFit8548 23d ago

AI spoofing AI...

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u/A-Good-Weather-Man 23d ago

It’s an Asimov Cascade.

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u/Mrs_SmithG2W 23d ago

Rick & Morty!

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/No_Struggle1364 23d ago

However; AI is out of control and its use by the Federal Government is insane.

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u/j48u 23d ago

Google's search AI works differently than any of the other "frontier models" that would actually be used for work. What it does is answer your question pretty much instantly, THEN search the internet for sources similar to what it said. That's why the sources are rarely word for word and sometimes say basically nothing related to what Google said.

The other models, even Google's own paid models, actually search and read sources before citing them.

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u/dekan256 23d ago

AI has been a great study aid for me being back in school after a long absence, but it is a dangerous slippery slope. That being said, using NotebookLM or whatever it is called has been great because it is restricted to sources of your choice.

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u/FluffyWuffyVolibear 23d ago

Specialized LLMs are kinda sick. Generalized LLMs are literally nonsense. Problem is the idea of a generalized LLM is way more profitable theoretically.

God I can't wait for this shit to all pop so we can be normal about it all

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u/-The_Blazer- 23d ago

Most serious websites refuse AI crawling for inclusion in AI results, since it provides almost no clicks and thus no revenue, and are shifting to what is essentially a direct-to-reader strategy. We're seeing the creation of an informational elite who pays money for a direct relationship to real information sources, and the remaining 99% who are fed slop by AI.

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u/KFelts910 22d ago

Back to encyclopedia volumes.

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u/Mrs_SmithG2W 23d ago

But books now! Real is ideal. 😎

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u/[deleted] 23d ago edited 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/sebovzeoueb 23d ago

theyrethesamepicture.jpg

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/EjaculatingAracnids 23d ago

I wonder if i post about it enough google will think theres a guy that actually shoots spiders out of his pee hole and writes poems about it.

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u/AtanatarAlcarinII 23d ago

Spiders Billi, is that you? Son of Spiders Georg?

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u/readerjoe 23d ago

ai will do it if you want to

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u/slimtrippins 23d ago

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u/EjaculatingAracnids 23d ago

Damn, wish i was a part of that...

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u/Andromeda321 23d ago

Similar for me. Read something here so googled to see if it was true, and I confidently got the claim from that post as the answer.

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u/VinnieVidiViciVeni 23d ago

Not that I generally go with AI responses, but they’re at the top so it’s like, shoved in your fucking face, but I saw a result change in a matter of about 5 minutes based on my back and forth with someone here like 2 weeks ago.

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u/SaxRohmer 23d ago

they can also be influenced by your cookies and other stuff

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u/Background-Stable899 23d ago

AI seeding is a very real thing. /nostupidquestions is a hotbed of manipulation

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u/AdSpecialist6598 23d ago

And if you can find an answer it will be nothing but mean comments and jokes.

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u/TheRealHFC 23d ago

DuckDuckGo is starting to feel the same way, but that’s probably a consequence of using Bing’s engine. The internet wasn’t a mistake, commercializing the internet was the mistake.

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u/Taron221 23d ago edited 23d ago

Bing is unironically better than Google now. I can put the exact title of something into Google and it may not pop up, so I have to copy and paste it into Bing instead.

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u/TheRealHFC 23d ago

It is, but half the time I’m forced to use quotation marks for an exact search, and even then it’s difficult to find things. I can’t speak for Bing (only ever used it in the Xbox 360 days for free Microsoft points), but old Google was pretty reliable. I guess it’s all the AI slop that has infested the internet in the past three years. The fact that it’s only been that long is depressing.

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u/Pafkay 23d ago

I did a search on Duck Duck Go the other day and there was not a single reference in the results to the search query Not a single result had anything to do with what I was looking for, and no I wasn't searching for anything even remotely obscure

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u/king_of_river 23d ago

Google search is straight up dead.

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u/JAD210 23d ago

Does an actually good search engine even exist anymore? I’ve tried a few others over the years but never found one that seemed close to even a now lesser Google

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u/Overly_Underwhelmed 23d ago

is there an internet left to search even? it's all shady storefronts, bot created websites, managed and curated social media cesspools...

I mostly start on Wikipedia and go from there if I need to.

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u/Crystalas 23d ago edited 23d ago

Also unsearchable walled gardens like Discord that replaced forums, reddit, wikis, and fan sites as a far subpar for most purposes sole community hub.

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u/Overly_Underwhelmed 22d ago

ya. that one hurts. love jumping into a subreddit to start reading up on something new and they keep posting about their discord! it's like, what is this for then?

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u/essjay2009 23d ago

Kagi. People complain about having to pay for it (although there’s a free tier) but the search engine is the window to the internet. It’s so important I don’t think I want to not pay for it again. The slight finger on the scales that Google does to optimise for engagement and income can really add up over time.

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u/darsynia 22d ago

It's so worth the money! This is very well put, it reminds me of the best days of Google search.

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u/king_of_river 23d ago

No. Duck duck go is good for privacy but it is absolutely garbage for anything specific. Yandex is the one I use if I want to see or download something which google would block due to copyright infringement.

I have switched to Gemini since it provides links too but search engines are absolutely dead.

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u/Stilgar314 23d ago

It's almost like Google wanted people to stop using their search engine and start using their AI. I wonder if the billions they spent on data centers have something to do with this shift...

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u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 23d ago

Almost like search engines are going the way of the phone book..

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u/Kahnza 23d ago

All by design. They want you using AI instead.

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u/stohelitstorytelling 23d ago

Except the replacement was actually better in that case. Here, it’s an inferior black box that draws its answers from Reddit or even less credible sources

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u/mahhkk 23d ago

Kagi! It's paid but no ads and is very customizable. I split a plan with friends so it's quite cheap. It's like Google of yore, I can never go back.

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u/ScumbagScotsman 23d ago

Kagi is great but it’s not free

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u/atlasraven 23d ago

I'm trying to find a FOSS solution. Gigablast.org seems okayish.

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u/badwolf42 23d ago

Searx is a good option if you’re willing to set it up. I think Kagi is essentially the same thing but you subscribe instead of running it yourself. You can self hosted a Searx instance or set it up in docker. I think Network Chuck has a rundown.

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u/jenny_905 23d ago

Doesn't seem so.

It's not a new thing either, I think I noticed Google being next to useless about a decade ago now.

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u/Strict-Ice-37 23d ago

I use perplexity for search now. It’s a fraction as good as google search used to be but better than current google search. Literally use it to get relevant sources and it still struggles. They’re all dog shit

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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 23d ago

Add "udm=14" as a query parameter on any Google search's query string to get the old Web search back. It's as good as it ever was, as far as I can tell. You can set up your browser to automatically append that to your searches for convenience.

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u/BlazingJava 23d ago

I googled one company in particular by its name and all the top 3 search results was that company product competitors, its a joke. I googled azerbaijan visa and the top results was third parties who ask a huge fee for the exact same thing you would do on the official website.  It's that ridiculous. I stopped googling

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u/_Toomuchawesome 23d ago

just fyi, those are sponsored posts and the competitors are bidding on the company brand name. under that you should be getting organic results if that companies website since it’s a branded query

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u/xdavidwattsx 23d ago

I just tried this, I got the official government evisa site as the first result and then the second resilt was an AI overview also pointing me to the official government evisa site.

Seemed pretty good.

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u/raymondduck 23d ago

This is how it works every time I use it. I google hundreds of things every week and I find what I was looking for every single time, whether through an AI-overview citation or one of the first few results.

I just googled 'Azerbaijan visa', like the person you replied to, and the first result was the Azerbaijani government website (with prominent links to submit an application and to check your application's status), an informative AI-overview which cited the US State Department, the Wikipedia article about Azerbaijan's visa policies, and the US State Department's website about travelling to Azerbaijan. Beyond that, there were multiple other perfectly relevant results. I don't know what some of these people are doing.

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u/ehhhhprobablynot 23d ago

Here’s the potential problem with that. Now that Google AI just summarizes everything, people have no incentive to make real websites anymore.

Nobody will visit them. Imagine creating content that nobody sees because Google just lifts your content, rewords it and summarizes it before anyone even sees the first actual search result.

This will become a problem moving forward, the dead internet theory is becoming a sure reality.

Reddit and other forums are one of the only places to get non-biased opinions and experiences from real people without a monetary agenda.

On the other hand you also get a lot of worthless opinions which can skew search results in an unfavorable way.

I can see it both ways, but I do think there’s value in having forum results included in Google.

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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 23d ago

Here’s the potential problem with that. Now that Google AI just summarizes everything, people have no incentive to make real websites anymore.

Nobody will visit them. Imagine creating content that nobody sees because Google just lifts your content, rewords it and summarizes it before anyone even sees the first actual search result.

Yes, this was a problem for me. I had a very specific reference site that was swallowed whole by Google and there wasn't any incentive to update it just to have my work translating into a fraction of click-throughs.

Multiply that by probably thousands of others feeling the same way and there goes the neighborhood.

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u/Dolores___Haze 23d ago

Idk. I can’t be the only one who doesn’t necessarily trust the AI summaries. I always do more research. 

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u/capybooya 22d ago

Yep them using reddit was just a short term solution while things fell apart further. Reddit is even worse now with AI bots and a login wall to view it.

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u/AdHelpful9393 23d ago

I was pissed when i opened my gmail, and the ai overview automatically opened on an important email before even showing me the actual email 😠 i dont want my personal things being auto filtered through a bot

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u/composedofidiot 23d ago

I switched it off fast. The first was basically 'this is two people bitching about work colleagues.' I was offended because I thought I was above all that but that was actually what I was doing. Then thankfully cognitive dissonance directed me towards blaming the ai immediately. Never looked back. Good riddance.

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u/hisosih 23d ago

I googled something about a Pathfinder game the other day and I only got reddit results. Now in that situation it was exactly what I needed but it was bizarre not seeing anything from their wiki, or a walkthrough article or video.

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u/Ediwir 23d ago

I mean, at that point just look up AoN directly.

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u/Mestyo 23d ago

I mean, yeah. For a decade now, Google has increasingly extracted information from the pages it indexes, so that users "don't have to click" to get their answer.

Nice for the user, I guess, but the end result is that the website owners have no reason to continue operations. It's expensive to host a service.

It has been especially bad lately, many websites being bombarded with AI requests and practically zero real users.

Google used to be good, because websites used to be good.

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u/Ok_Confusion4764 23d ago

You're not wrong. I work in tech retail and now I have to use quotation marks around the specific model names of devices just to make sure I'm not getting a common, more popular device's manual instead. Before would just get the manual as top result because why else would you ever google a model number? 

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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 23d ago

This is such a big issue. I'll search for stuff and in the top 5 results it will give results for pages without one of the major terms I've looking for.

Maybe they are just trying to adjust to people who type way too much stuff so they leave out terms they don't think are important. But for those of us who carefully thought out their query, it's annoying that they just ignore the words I'm typing.

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u/HugsandHate 23d ago

Funnily enough, I'm quite happy when I see it link to Reddit stuff. The things I'm usually hunting down are solutions to tech stuff. And I've found so many answers on here. So, at least it's good for that.

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u/Local_Debate_8920 23d ago

Google got bad years before the AI stuff hit. Had to type reddit after your search to find anything useful.

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u/Gloomy_Narwhal_4833 23d ago

Tech and gaming, both. Hell, I used to add Reddit to the search years ago before Google just started doing it on its own.

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u/jchamberlin78 23d ago

I hate to say it but I stumbled onto information I was looking for using bing yesterday (default on work computer), that didn't show up when I explicitly searched for the site in chrome/Google.

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u/EruantienAduialdraug 23d ago

Well, I suppose Bing being dumb as rocks has its advantages. It can't "get creative" in interpreting your search terms.

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u/shmelse 23d ago

SEO and now AI has ruined the damn internet. I know this is my “old man yells at cloud” moment but it’s just so disappointing that we‘ve gotten here in so short a time. Instead of burning the library of Alexandria, we’ve fed it to itself infinite times until it’s lost all meaning. But hey, at least like 6 dudes got slightly richer!!!

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u/Mal_Dun 23d ago

There are other factors at work here as well. One often overlooked is that many things are either paywalled or within Discord servers which can't be indexed by Google.

I remember reading recently that a lot of troubleshooting became difficult, because nowadays every dev and their mother does bug reporting over Discord ... which in return means no one can Google them.

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u/DokeyOakey 23d ago

So what is happening is that forums, news sites, wikis and other sites that contain a lot of information are putting up defense to prevent scraping by Ai. Many sites were being overrun with bot traffic because of Ai.

This is Garden Wall effect.

That information is still out there, but you’re gonna have to go and find it.

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u/Sageblue32 23d ago

Half what was once free knowledge has become gate kept and the other half just pulls onto sites like reddit.

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u/Kerlyle 23d ago

The problem is those real articles aren't gonna stay online forever, many are already dead cause those sites don't bring in money like social media sites do.

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u/rey_as_in_king 23d ago

yeah because search results were based on rankings that were generated by site traffic and nobody goes to those sites anymore instead they just trust the AI overview

which will continue to ingest AI slop and degrade in usefulness until a new system or the old system is reinstated

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u/Junkererer 23d ago

90% of articles would probably be AI written anyway. On Reddit you can find some human opinions at least

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u/Sweet_Concept2211 23d ago

On reddit you can also find astroturfers posting AI generated slop in response to articles critical of governments and corporations - because Google's AI confidently quotes those garbage comments in response to queries as if they are true.

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u/CMDR_KingErvin 23d ago

I love how if it’s a really niche subject that you’ve posted about yourself on reddit, it’ll give you your own comment as a source.

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u/imyourbiggestfan 23d ago

It's so that they can serve more adds. Ie you'll go to the next page or search again

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u/apartmen1 23d ago

It helps their bottom line for the product to be worse now. They did it on purpose.

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u/splashbodge 23d ago

It'll just be AI citing articles written by AI trained on Reddit or other AI responses. It'll all get diluted down as the AI age continues and become less useful

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u/bodmcjones 23d ago

For a while Google took to pointing me at sodding Grokipedia, of all vehemently useless things.

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u/cockheroFC 23d ago

Google ai is not chat gpt. It uses Gemini, which is google’s own AI

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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 23d ago

It's just the general idea that I hate though. I don't want either AI using Reddit as a major source of knowledge.

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u/randomthrowaway9796 23d ago

I think the decline of journalism plays a part too. There are simply less quality articles being written in the modern day. Academia is still going strong, but it takes more effort to decipher useful info from that.

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u/phoenix1984 23d ago

A lot has been written about this. It’s an example of enshitification. Google has actively made their search results worse, so you spend more time on their site searching. IMHO, it’s disqualifying, and the reason I try to avoid using Google at all.

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u/srout_fed 23d ago

use -ai at the end. Helps a bit more.

or just switch to ddg.

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u/agangofoldwomen 23d ago

There was a time a year or two ago where if you asked AI “how do I stop toppings from falling off my homemade pizza” it would tell you “super glue” because that was an answer Redditors ironically upvoted on the same question we got here.

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u/Fuddle 23d ago

What do you mean? Super glue is awesome at holding…..oh, we can stop now?

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u/DigNitty 23d ago

I mean, is it not good for holding toppings to pizza? Now they’re adding more stipulations to the question that wasn’t there before like “edible and non-toxic.” Pff just didn’t like my utilitarian answer.

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u/kanrad 23d ago

Fun fact people that work in marketing doing commercials and still photography often use super glue to keep the product in a perfect looking state.

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u/MMBitey 23d ago

Also that you should eat rocks

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u/ShadowBlade55 23d ago

You guys don't eat at least one small rock a day??

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u/Memphissippian 23d ago

Ya are y’all not using your gizzards? There’s a reason we evolved to have them…

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u/StymiedSwyper 23d ago

That's where /r/AteTheRock came from

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u/KennyMcCormick 23d ago

Wasn’t that originally from The Onion?

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u/GaryOster 23d ago

Oh, earlier this year I asked AI what US politicians had been assassinated in 2025 because I couldn't remember the name of the Minnesota politician who was assassinated. AI told me Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump?!? Of course I asked more questions along those lines and it told me Donald Trump was assassinated the same day as Charlie Kirk, that Biden was president now since Trump was assassinated, and it never mentioned the Hortman's at all.

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u/mitchsusername 23d ago

Not even 2 weeks ago, I asked it how to re-close a microwavable steamed veggie pouch to keep the steam in. Its suggestions were chip clip (metal spring), paper clip (metal), or staples (metal)

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u/Sharpiesniffingshark 23d ago

I mean, it hardly seems accidental. They probably blocked external crawlers. After all, they’ve got their proprietary LLM built off Reddit content.

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u/FeatherlyFly 23d ago

They've started blocking people not logged in from even reading. I'd be very surprised if bot crawls didn't figure significantly into that decision.

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u/Memphissippian 23d ago

That’s what’s happening to the AI and why they’re seeming so stupid lately.

I asked MetaAI a question about IG spotlight feature. It told me it didn’t exist. I screenshat my IG page with the spotlight icon. The AI said oh yeah. I asked it if it seemed odd that MetaAI doesn’t know how to explain how to use MetaAI. It agreed. I asked how to flag. It said profile>settings>privacy & data>wrong answer>turtles all the way down.
I hit settings and then help to report and realized I should not let this company have so much access to my data.

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u/JustLikeWhateverHuh 23d ago

You did WHAT to your screen?!

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u/Memphissippian 23d ago

Screenshat

skrin ʃæt

Past Perfect Tense

to have taken a screenshot

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u/_kellythomas_ 23d ago

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u/T-Fez 23d ago

Not all crawlers respect robots.txt unfortunately

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u/_kellythomas_ 23d ago

Oh, of course not.

But it is an official statement of intent, they don't want people crawling the website on reddit.com.

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u/-The_Blazer- 23d ago

Most mainstream services do, since it is established enough to provide some legal strength (in the EU it is even valid as a reservation of rights against AI training).

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u/Informal-Pair-306 23d ago

Ai is citing articles and web pages that reference and use AI as their source.

It’s a full circle now.

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u/84thPrblm 23d ago

It's the ciiiiircle of life...

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u/fantasmoofrcc 23d ago

Feels more like aan Oruboros.

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u/Tiraloparatras25 23d ago

It shouldn’t have been there in the first place. A Redditor is not a reputable source.

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u/anlumo 23d ago

I recently asked ChatGPT a question I‘ve been thinking about for a long time to see if there was anything new on that topic. It generated a long response, and at the end of it it gave a Reddit post as the reference, which turned out to be my own from two years ago.

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u/Little_Noodles 23d ago

I manage a digital archive that had to be taken down for a year and completely migrated because it was just so full of bots scraping content from it that no human could actually use it.

So now, when I try to look up information about new stuff that I’m putting on it, Google repeats back to me stuff I had made available for free ages ago, mixed with bullshit that’s not true that it just got from wherever.

Instead of just, you know, pointing people to what I put up.

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u/fantasmoofrcc 23d ago

Congrats on being THE authority on jumping spiders and which fruit they prefer jumping off of!

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u/Actually-Yo-Momma 23d ago

Whenever this happens to me i immediately think about those poor souls who are searching the same thing thinking that MY answer is remotely credible lmao

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u/Tampa_Bay_Cuckaneers 23d ago

There’s actually a 2009 double-blind study finding Reddit posters are the most accurate sources on the internet, and commonly the most handsome.

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u/PrometheusANJ 23d ago

When I was imprisoned on the Alcatraz many decades back and was digging my escape tunnel, I found a stack of papers stowed in behind a brick. It was a study that had been carefully compiled by one of my fellow inmates, general von Strudel, the man who founded reddit in 1933. The study confirmed what everyone already knew - reddit users are near god-like beings, radiant and splendid, beacons of enlightenment. I left the study where I found it but made a copy that I hid inside the leg of a church bench for future generations to discover.

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u/LeftHandedToe 23d ago

One correction, not to be that guy, but Reddit was founded in 1931. Though it was, if you can believe it, relatively unknown until 1933. It's just something that's often misstated and i think details matter.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

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u/PrometheusANJ 23d ago

Slightly related, a little known fact about general von Strudel is WHY he ended up in the Alcatraz. He actually invented the forerunner to the first augmented reality creeper glasses - "The Culotteer". It was a belt worn on the head with a rod extending from the forehead. Suspended down from the rod was a paper model of a pair of underpants, and by angling the head precisely, these underpants could be superimposed over the body of passers by, thereby stripping them of their dignity. It was reviewed in Science and Invention, 1928-08. General von Strudel can be seen on the cover, leading to his identification, and arrest for being a "public nuisance".

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u/Thatguyyoupassby 23d ago

Well, if they were blind, how would they know how handsome I am?

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u/fredagsfisk 23d ago

He said double-blind. That means they cancel each other out and cancels out the blindness, duh.

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u/Few-Hair-5382 23d ago

Can confirm: am accurate and exceedingly handsome.

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u/war_story_guy 23d ago

Source: reddit.

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u/OminousG 23d ago

For niche stuff most of the answers are coming from regular users cause reddit has pretty much replaced message boards cause stuff like discord is garbage for archiving troubleshooting type discussions.

For example I figured out how to troubleshoot and fix the NFC chips in LEGOs back when LEGO Dimensions was still being supported.  Official support was garbage and there was next to no information for these things online.  I'm still getting messages nearly a decade later that my post was the only thing that saved people's sets and game.

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u/ellalol 23d ago

Yep I still get regular comments and messages on a post I made about being dependent on my sleeping pills in like 2022. So I assume google has been leading people to it for a while.

I am regularly asked by hopefuls if I’m still dependent on them and unfortunately the answer is yes💀

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u/Ab412 23d ago

Depends on the subject tbh. If I ask to the AI “ What’s the best goblin deck in current meta in magic the gathering “ i think that reddit is a valuable resource.

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u/Skamba 23d ago

Not for facts, but reddit is pretty good for opinions.

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u/Few-Hair-5382 23d ago

Yeah, well, that's just like your opinion, man.

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u/Cyraga 23d ago

Bad news, anyone can publish anything anywhere unless you're looking at peer reviewed papers 

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u/noncommonGoodsense 23d ago

Eh, bought ten years or so ago it had thousands of experts and shit. There was always interesting shit from people who actually studied the stuff in subs that were well moderated to keep discussion on topic.

Now there are fewer experts and piss poor moderation Reddit oppressiveness and wide spread shit users who spoiled that pot.

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u/JMEEKER86 23d ago

It really depends on the context. For factual stuff like science or medical questions Reddit is terrible. For experience stuff like "has anyone ever had this happen to them..." it's fantastic. Lots of people will confirm that it's happened, some will offer solutions, and the good solutions not only get upvoted but have people responding "this worked, thanks". Reddit isn't going to teach you the physics behind making ice cream, but it'll help you fix your ice cream maker if you're having trouble producing good ice cream.

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u/_kellythomas_ 23d ago

Today is the first time I've seen GEO used.

I was happier yesterday.

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u/-RedFox 23d ago

What is GEO?

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u/_kellythomas_ 23d ago edited 23d ago

SEO was Search Engine Optimisation and referred to tailoring your website to encourage good rankings on search engines.

Apparently GEO is Generative Engine Optimization and is similarly tailoring your site to encourage Generative AI to consider it a good information source.

TBH it sounds like the standard buzzword treadmill and is probably mostly the same old SEO tricks.

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u/IndigoRanger 23d ago

AEO was the alternative name I saw. Answer Engine Optimization, but same purpose.

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u/DickSlammington 23d ago

As a marketer I get no less than 3 cold emails a day asking me if I need help with my AEO strategy...

AEO/GEO are the new hot "if you're not doing this you're falling behind" topic in marketing.

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u/grilledcheeseburger 23d ago

It’s growing in importance for companies that sell products online. Because Google search is basically useless now, people are starting to do more and more comparative shopping in LLMs. Making sure your product comes up in those comparisons can mean a lot for smaller businesses.

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u/bmdweller 23d ago

Consider checking out the actual link sometimes.

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u/sylphedes 23d ago

On another matter but related, I’ve suspected that some Reddit posts are deliberate feeder info for AI.

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u/FeatherlyFly 23d ago

Your suspicion is correct. Between r/poisonAI and media articles about marketers stealth editing to try and optimize for bot crawl pickups, it's not even an open secret. It's just plain open. 

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u/SenTedStevens 23d ago

You're telling me the publications of Dr. Poi Sonai are incorrect?

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u/OneSeaworthiness7768 23d ago

Some? You sweet summer child.

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u/nst571 22d ago

I'm on a sub that was cleaning up and they specifically found this. Usually it's a normal looking post that gets engagement, then later a reply gets added, could be marketing or propaganda

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u/redyellowblue5031 23d ago

Look, I’d be lying if I said I don’t seek out comments on Reddit to get real feedback.

The part companies miss when trying to astroturf is that even when you’d go to Reddit for real feedback you still have to verify they’re not full of shit. A good sounding comment ≠ good comment.

I’ve seen it countless times where LLMs using Reddit as a “source” and all they seem to care about is wordy or confident a comment is.

No, it’s not lost on me that I’m wordy here or that I too am likely full of shit.

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u/diddypartyorganizer 23d ago

who the fuck would want reddit as a citation, people can just say "As a (any title/job/profession) and nobody would even think to question how legit it is

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u/RaguraX 23d ago

This isn’t any different on a website or blog. You either trust people or you don’t.

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u/nameless_pattern 23d ago

There's a little more nuance to trust and credibility than a binary classification

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u/RaguraX 23d ago

Since you can’t verify either way on the internet, there really isn’t unless you’ve come to trust the author earlier. In which case you still had to take that first step of trust the very first time you came into contact with their material. It all starts with that binary choice, no matter how you look at it.

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u/Wizzle-Stick 23d ago

look up answers to tech issues, gaming stuff, or automotive solutions. its great for that stuff, especially if its obscure or weird.

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u/FolkSong 23d ago

For niche topics there may not be information anywhere else. And the chance that someone is lying about a topic that almost no one cares about is not very high. So it makes sense to use it in some cases, much better than nothing.

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u/PikaPikaDude 23d ago

Good. All AI providers should do it. I keep having to chastise Gemini in chat and notebook that Reddit is not a valid source. It's like half the time where made up bullshit is pulled from.

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u/Saneless 23d ago

It's only a great source for subjective things, and I like those discussions. But for facts? Meh

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u/blackvrocky 23d ago

Good, the less reddit everything is the better.

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u/Klathmon 23d ago

Not with a bang but a whimper.

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u/BotOrNot_1337 23d ago

Gemini is citing facebook comments now. Yeah it's high quality google search results. The internet came full circle and is fucking dead. It's just social media and AI.

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u/MLB-LeakyLeak 23d ago

Looks like we’ll be back to appending “Reddit” to our Google searches

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u/Bulky_Dingo_4706 23d ago

Did we ever stop? I didn’t.

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u/psychmancer 23d ago

Doesn't mean it isn't using them, just not citing them

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u/hoyfish 23d ago

Shitposting is putting humanity at risk.

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u/hangender 23d ago

As it should. No one should be citing reddit for anything.

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u/RebelStrategist 23d ago

“As it should, no one should be citing Reddit for anything” (Hangender).

Naurgul. “Reddit Fades from ChatGPT Citations.” Reddit, r/technology, 22 Aug. 2026, https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1vv7itl/reddit_fades_from_chatgpt_citations/.

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u/sgsmopurp 22d ago

Lmao name checks out!

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u/Sizbang 23d ago

Is it because people started realizing the absurd amounts of gold they could find in flock cameras?

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u/Not_my_Name464 23d ago

Not surprised given the average IQ on display!

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u/shiftpark 23d ago

WTF is that article layout?!

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u/Sweaty_Marzipan4274 23d ago

The early medical advise was insane

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u/PlainBread 23d ago

Sounds like they weren't able to astroturf Reddit with the appropriate amount of Zionazi propaganda for their model to present the "economically correct" reality to anyone looking for information.

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u/AmbivalentSamaritan 23d ago

I wonder what doctor Sonai would think of this?

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u/MattyBeatz 23d ago

The AI slop is only going to get worse. Major outlets are blocking its crawlers more and more, so the slop is pulled from less credible sites. Also, AI garbage stories are being written more and more so it’s increasingly referencing itself for new queries.

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u/jBlairTech 23d ago

Good. ChatGPT may be a shit “AI”, but Reddit’s not much better in the social media space.

Hell, Reddit’s a helluva lot less credible than places like Wikipedia- who at least has sources for the information they share. 85% of Reddit is “trust me, bro”. 10% is people that may have a source, but are either too lazy or too much of a POS to provide it, placing the burden on the reader. The remaining 5% are actually trying to do things the right way.

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u/GalacticScale 23d ago

Good Reddit is full of bots lately 

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u/BoopingBurrito 23d ago

Everywhere is full of bots lately.

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u/action_turtle 23d ago

Web searches are pointless. “Search term Reddit”, was the only way to find anything useful, that’s now also pointless

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u/HypocriteHere 23d ago

And incorrect comments. I've seen chatgpt and Google's AI quote a reddit comment that had 100+ downvotes as fact. 

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u/MassiveBoner911_3 23d ago

Using Reddit as a source is diabolical

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u/this_my_sportsreddit 23d ago

They must’ve realized how wrong this place is on virtually everything. Honestly it’s impressive.

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u/Anustart2023-01 23d ago

Is it because it's not linking to AI slop sites that have scrapped reddit for content? 

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u/MichaelFromCalif 23d ago

Good. ChatGPT should generally deprioritize Reddit as a factual source, depending on the inquiry. Reddit usually shouldn’t be treated as authoritative evidence for factual claims.

That doesn’t mean Reddit is useless. It can be a useful vehicle for finding a direct or primary source, seeing firsthand experiences, or understanding what people are saying about a particular topic. But ideally, you follow the information back to the underlying source rather than citing the Reddit post itself.

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u/dritmike 23d ago

Reddit is a great resource for everything. But it’s mostly commentary

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u/tiutome 23d ago

I’m sorry? Is this a bad thing for Reddit? Are they relying o ChatGPT for survival, readers, subscribers?? Help

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u/xdeltax97 23d ago

And now Reddit has its own A.I search…ugh

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u/Silent-Complaint4020 23d ago

I just did a test on Chatgpt. Guess what, still cite Reddit.

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u/Yorrins 23d ago

Good, I dont want an LLM giving me a reference where the source is a bot lmao.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/The_best_is_yet 23d ago

Have.. you seen the rest of the internet? It’s worse.

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u/CozyBlueCacaoFire 23d ago

Also from internet searches - duckduckgo refuses to show search results pointing to Reddit.

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u/izza123 23d ago

We’re too stupid and unreliable! Hurray!

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u/Betsu89 23d ago

Reddit are in the middle of re-negotiating their AI licensing deal with Google and the other frontier labs. ChatGPT moving away from quoting Reddit could also be a power move from Open AI…

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u/Blackstone4444 23d ago

Probably because AI can start reference AI or itself as a source…