For the folks who want to know the cause of the investigation without needing to click through to the article:
Why is Reddit being Investigated?
Reddit owns and operates the eponymous social news aggregation, forum, and social media platform. Reddit receives a significant portion of its user traffic from individuals seeking answers to questions using Google Search. During the relevant period, Reddit assured investors that Google’s use of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) in Google’s search results did not have a material impact on Reddit’s user growth.
In truth, Google’s use of AI dented Reddit’s user growth by eliminating the need for individuals to visit and click through to Reddit to get answers to their questions. Rather, the answers appeared through Google’s AI search results.
Reddit made it unmistakably clear that they don’t want traffic from people using their API and that they don’t want google or anyone else to scrape “their” content, which I’m pretty sure will have significant impact on SEO. They also have made sure to please potential shareholders by banning a ton of users and communities before their IPO.
As a result, the quality and quantity of discussion on the platform has lowered, some people even tried to mass delete their posts and comments which makes some threads to appear like ghost towns, which has also revealed the insane amount of inorganic communication (bots and the like).
So how exactly did google kill their userbase?
This is not about what Google did but rather how reddit presented what Google did in its financial statements.
IE misleading investors regarding the impact Google AI Seach will have on traffic
