Google is hot for data, user-generated data, probably to train their Gemini bot, and they're looking for more public data they can use; Google doesn't have a social platform to source from since G+ went tits up, so it looks like Reddit is their go-to.

The search engine has seen user bias, with "Reddit" being a popular search refinement tool, so they are playing into that now. Google and Reddit recently struck up a partnership too, and man, have I been seeing a lot of Reddit results in Google search for my clients, it's nuts, complete overkill in fact.

I've seen tonnes of complaints in the SEO community of reddit stuffing so it looks like Google is adding a search refinement for forums.

Google claims they are making it easier for searchers to find content that reflects individuals' perspectives and first-hand experiences on Search.

I guess if you are running a forum like SN or you have your own Subreddit, you'll get a lot more love from search if you play by their rules.

Google has also pushed out schema markup support for Forum content; I checked if SN is using it using the rich results tool.

You can find the structured data format here, might be worth adding to post templates. This isn't to say Google is going to hand you more traffic, but playing into the trend never hurt.