• Omega (she/her) @lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    When Reddit’s API debacle happened lots of people moved away. Some deleted their comments, some edited them with a message in protest. But sadly the consequences is that a lot of history and useful information got lost in the process.

    I don’t know how I feel about this. I understand why it’s done and even why it needs to be done, but it still makes me sad considering the amount of times where Reddit saved me from massive headaches with IT stuff and so on…

    • Roopappy@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      As someone who deleted their posts… yes. The goal was to make Reddit worse, by removing my contributions to it because they forgot where their value came from.

      My content had some small value to them. They didn’t deserve it.

      • dickalan@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I hope they delete all your stuff when your account gets banned because I’ve left at least three of those in my wake

        • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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          3 days ago

          They don’t delete your content, they just redact your username and disassociate each individual comment from your larger profile so nobody could, for example, click on the deleted user who posted a comment in r/abc and see they also posted a particular comment in r/xyz.

          The reason tools like Redact (many of them all use this same name lol) have taken off in popularity is because they delete, or redact the contents of your posts before you delete the account, thus making even that vestigial data worthless.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          I believe they are still there but hidden.

          Quite possibily it depends on the type of ban you received (e.g. spam vs inflicting harm on xyz)

          • dickalan@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            I know better than to threaten people online. It was all stupid political bullshit.

            • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              3 days ago

              That’s not really what I meant.
              What I was trying to say is no ban is equal. Reddit may very well have nuance to bans they can utilize that will prevent you from just participating in comments/upvotes to full on shadow-bans.

      • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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        3 days ago

        I hear these justifications a lot, but the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises.

        The value of the archival data that can be affected by deleting or editing is almost entirely only user-accessed value. Reddit isn’t harmed at all from the edits. It primarily needs active regular users to improve its stock value. Alternatively, it can sell archival data for AI training.

        Editing old comments removes neither value source from Reddit. You moved away from it so deprived it of both the material value of new comments and the statistical value of being an active user. Reddit also assuredly has saved data from before the API issue and can likely spot and clean the mass edits to sell the data from training purposes.

        Conversely, the value to users and society is high. So many solutions to problems that are gone forever. The Internet is decaying already and it gets harder to find useful information, and those leaving decided to just burn down a library of Alexandria.

        It’s their - and your - right, sure. They’re by definition done on comments the user owns. But this is just punching desperate Internet users in the face hoping it gives Reddit a bloody nose.

        • glimse@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Would you sign up for a social media website if all the tech support posts looked like the above?

        • expr@programming.dev
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          3 days ago

          If that were true, then why did Reddit respond to the mass deletions (that’s what people did at first, not edits) by undeleting the comments?

        • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          those leaving decided to just burn down a library of Alexandria.

          More like I had my book taken off the shelves because the librarians are dicks

          • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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            2 days ago

            Ah, where are those books now? Which shelves can I find them on?

            I get the metaphorical point, but it’s a point without effect. “Removing with no possible present or future access” is the same as “burning” for society’s purposes.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          3 days ago

          the highest value content, is mostly political anyways, its draws in more money for a platform, because users are addicted ragebait.

    • wols@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      Yup, Reddit fucked us all after we gave them our knowledge for free.
      Trick people into thinking they’re contributing to a commons, steal the contributions and run. Very understandable that many people decided to retaliate after the betrayal.
      I really hope decentralized knowledge bases take off. Aggregating niche knowledge from experts and non-experts everywhere the internet touches is such a valuable proposition!

      I had like one useful comment posted to Reddit. I’ve left it up, and once every few months I get a comment being appreciative for the info.
      Reddit gets the traffic because of Google indexing the original post of a user with the problem. People are going to visit it regardless of whether they’ll find the answer or not. In fact, if they don’t find it, they’re more likely to keep browsing posts in the hope of finding something.

    • Auth@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Reddit undeleted a lot of the content removed during the API debacle. This comment must have been after that because you can see the latest comment is post API changes.

      • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
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        3 days ago

        That’s why I didn’t close my account and still do a new turn of mass edits every 2-3 months. I have nothing deleted, just constantly overwritten. I get regularly banned from some subreddits after each wave, probably because some comments may trigger some sort of spam detection and edits alert the mods then.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          3 days ago

          reddit can detect if you did massedit as suspicious activity, a normal person cant change multiple comments at once, but with a script they will see it as botting.

    • potustheplant@feddit.nl
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      3 days ago

      The sad part of it is that they (reddit) can still access that deleleted information and sell it for AI training. Even as a “power” user you can use websites that “undelete” that content. The only ones truly affected by this are people randomly browsing reddit.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        3 days ago

        I mean it does reduce the value of the content that users created on reddit if a ton of random comments were deleted in protest. Every time you hit a thread like the OOP it reduces reddit 's value to the individual, and in aggregate it reduces reddits value

        • potustheplant@feddit.nl
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          3 days ago

          Did you actually read my comment? That’s an issue casual users have. If you want to see deleted comments, there’s a way to do that.

          The only thing that actually hurts reddit is if people stop using it an generating new content.