Methstreams, Crackstreams and Streameast – Reddit Gets Huge Traffic For Illegal Keywords

In this op-ed article, I discuss how Google and Reddit promote illegal streaming websites like Streameast, Crackstreams and Methstreams. I share my research on top Reddit pages and discuss hypocritic behavior of these two tech giants.

reddit google and their take on illegal websites

Reddit is okay. It’s a place for people to discuss things that other platforms probably don’t allow. Including piracy, explicit videos, and almost every inhumane thing on the Internet.

This includes open discussion about illegal streaming websites like Crackstreams, Methstreams, Streameast, and more. They actually have a pretty popular r/piracy subreddit where they obviously don’t talk about how to watch movies or sports legally.

I decided to have a look at what content was rising freshly on Reddit and as I was expecting, Reddit has insane traffic for these illegal streaming platforms. And these threads aren’t about advocating against the illegal sites. These are actually promoting illegal streaming.

I went to Semrush to check Reddit pages that gained visitors recently. Here is what the stat looks like.

reddit page rise in traffic

The pages are following:

  • I blame shefty the snitch – A thread about Methstreams and Crackstreams being banned and people discuss why it’s a bad idea to ban piracy streaming websites. The top Keywords for the page were: Streameast, Steameast, thestreameast, streamest, streameasy, stremeast, streameat, etc. Most of these keywords are misspelled terms for the parent keyword ‘Streameast’. The page shows to get a traffic of 1.7 million with just 67 keywords.
  • Another page that gets huge traffic has a thread that shows to have been removed by the moderators but the page still exists and the thread has all the comments there too. So, Google still sends traffic to that thread. Check here – Methstreams and Crackstreams down? – The post gets traffic for same set of keywords as the first one.
  • Another popular post that gets huge Google traffic is about illegal movie streaming websites in the subreddit YSK or You Should Know was this one – YSK: There’s a Free Streaming Site for Movies and Shows you can’t find anywhere else. It talks about a movie streaming site called Flixbaba.com which the comment section loves apparently. One user comments that he is watching ‘Dune’ on that website right at that moment.

And these are 3 of the millions of illegal information-sharing posts that Reddit sees every month. People openly talk about piracy websites, and share the latest updated list of free movie streaming and sports streaming websites as authorities crack the old ones.

And the constant share of ‘leaked’ explicit videos… Let’s not even go there!

Google uses Reddit to train its algorithms and AI, but what about the illegal discussions?

In February 2024, Reddit and Google entered into a significant partnership valued at approximately $60 million annually.

This agreement grants Google access to Reddit’s extensive real-time user-generated content, enabling the tech giant to utilize this data for training its artificial intelligence models.

So, how is this decision not ethically opposite to what Google has always been punishing publishers for? How is Google training its programs and algorithms using a platform that discusses illegal operations openly and doesn’t shy away from any kind of illegal and harmful content?

And if Google is aware of this, why is Google still ranking all these illegal threads so high? Google constantly removes content from its search published by common publishers citing DMCA reasons. Many of these removals are based on the fact that the content promotes the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials.

Lumen database has a huge list of web pages removed by Google every day because of complaints filed against websites like Methstreams, Crackstreams, or Streameast.

Then, how is it that Google cannot filter this content from Reddit when it has a content partnership with Reddit?

The hypocrisy of Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman on ‘permission’ to use content

I recently read news about Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman saying ‘it is a pain in the ass’ that Microsoft and Perplexity use Reddit to scrape data and train their AI models.

A website that has a huge section of its audience sharing piracy links with a subreddit devoted to piracy is talking about ‘permission’ to use content!

I mean how do you even rate this level of hypocrisy?

(This is an opinion piece and all the claims made in this article have been researched using industry-acknowledged tools)


Need To Ask Something?

2 responses

  1. Kendall Avatar

    I been looking for a movie stream site for the past 20 mins, this article helped me find flixbaba.com to watch movies with ease. Thanks!

    1. That wasn’t the motive here.

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