Reddit removes years of chat and message archives from users’ accounts::undefined

  • DavidRay
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    2 years ago

    If your past conversations are important to you, then you should make a point of archiving them. Regardless of the platform.

    Personally, I’m hoping FaceBook does the same thing to the account I can no longer remember the password to.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
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      2 years ago

      Yep, this is why I always back up my posts and any other important posts or anything else important.

  • Meow.tar.gz@lemmy.goblackcat.com
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    2 years ago

    Man fuck those fascists. I am glad for every day that I am not on there writing content for them. Now granted my content might be shyte but it still drove revenue. 😆

    • MyPornAlt@lemmynsfw.com
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      2 years ago

      I’m doing a full history delete using my data request as a reference to all my comments. 17761 comments. Many stupid crap, but also many helpful tech related stuff that will no longer drive traffic to Reddit.

      • LemmyLefty@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        That’s just so sad to me. Is there any place we could tell people to store or upload these things? I hate that we’re losing so much because of one company’s hubris.

        Honestly even an instance that’s just “deletedposts.lemmy” or something like that, to save posts that were useful.

        • MyPornAlt@lemmynsfw.com
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          2 years ago

          Agree that it’s sad, and I’ve got the export of my posts if that ends up being useful… but idk what to do with it rn

          • db2@lemmy.one
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            2 years ago

            Sooner or later someone will make something, either a site or actual software, that will be able to parse the dumps and present it in a user-friendly fashion. There are enough users out there with data dumps now to justify it.

            If/when it happens it’ll also be possible to create an archive everyone can see and search that isn’t beholden to reddit at all.

      • db2@lemmy.one
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        2 years ago

        using my data request as a reference to all my comments

        You… absolute genius. Thank you, that should have occurred to me. 🤦 This I can just script to catch all the old ones that don’t show up in the user overview.

        • MyPornAlt@lemmynsfw.com
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          2 years ago

          Their rate limiting is a bit annoying, but after adding a 3 second delay (maybe overkill) the deletions seem to be progressing steadily.

  • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    whelp, the real “landed gentry” have spoken. now back to the fields, serf!

  • db2@lemmy.one
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    2 years ago

    Many of those left on reddit, not all but many, are the ones who were happily shitting on the mods who were protesting. Fuck those trolls, they voted for the Leopard Party. The rest of us did a data request like it said when the shenanigans started because the writing was on the wall.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      Lol, exactly. Sucks to be anyone still licking Redditinc boot. I have my datadump, I used chat maybe once, twice then turned it off.

  • frazw@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    My gut tells me they are not deleted but rather simply no longer publicly available. Can’t have these pesky AI bots training for free.

    • Radium@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      More likely just moved to cold storage to save money. It’s expensive to keep data in an easily accessible database. If you don’t need to access it you can move it to object storage for pennies on the dollar and still keep it accessible for whatever nefarious data brokers you want to sell it to in the future

      • Muddybulldog@mylemmy.win
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        2 years ago

        They’re implementing new chat infrastructure and only replicated 2023/01/01 forward. It’s in the article.

        • towerful@programming.dev
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          2 years ago

          Oh man.
          To be able to have a long running project and decide to truncate years worth of data…
          Just, drop it like you never need it again.

          Apart from working at Reddit, sounds like a dream

          • Wheels@lemmy.sdf.org
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            2 years ago

            Right but the difference is Reddit is now charging an extortionate amount for data access via the API when compared to other platforms.
            What do you think this (if achieved what was hoped) massive new flow of income was supposed to help sustain?
            Oh yeah, infrastructure costs.

              • Wheels@lemmy.sdf.org
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                2 years ago

                Read about how they work.

                No need to be quite so condescending is there?
                I fully understand how they work.
                Seems like this growth they should be trying to achieve is fucking futile when they:

                • cut off the apps that a portion of their most active users use
                • prevent helpful bots (automod etc.) working correctly or being financially viable due to API changes
                • shuttered an award system that helped maintain engagement via vain dopamine acquisition and actively made them money with no replacement in sight other than some data mined financial incentive program which will lead to a lack of genuine discussion
                • spat in the face of their largely volunteer moderation community who volunteer their time for free to help keep things smooth
                • delete the content histories of their users when it isn’t publicly facing. Users give content to platform, that’s how Reddit exists, to remove DMs from users it makes it very apparent they’re content pigs and nothing more. Can’t have a transactional platform (content to profit) if the content doesn’t feel any incentive to use the platform.

                Not to mention, infrastructure costs lead to growth.
                If you don’t have the resources to support your current platform, you shouldn’t be actively trying to grow the platform by discarding older content. It makes those accessing and making use of the content (be it individual or institutional) lose trust in the quality of data.

                Great growth strategy that.

                • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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                  2 years ago

                  He means the business model they’re going for with the IPO.

                  Growth means the value of the company. The shares. The stockholders getting dividends. It has fuck all to with user experience, or even user growth. It’s about manipulating information and using clever accounting to get investors to give you money.

    • Muddybulldog@mylemmy.win
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      2 years ago

      They’re implementing new chat infrastructure and only replicated 2023/01/01 forward. It’s in the article.

    • ultimate_question@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      100%. The idea that reddit would just permanently delete all those chat messages rather than just archive them away from the public is crazy. Even if they don’t directly sell them to advertisers there’s a shitload of value for private ML training

    • ultimate_question@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      100%. The idea that reddit would just permanently delete all those chat messages rather than just archive them away from the public is crazy. Even if they don’t directly sell them to advertisers there’s a shitload of value for private ML training

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      Probably want to prevent people from deleting their own messages. Can’t delete messages you don’t have access to anymore.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I think it’s the opposite. These are private chats that can’t be sold to the AI, that’s why Reddit thinks they’re worthless.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Wow, glad I didn’t have any. I really was a fairly minimal reddit user, fortunately. I do feel bad for folks who had a lot invested in those chats / friendships.

  • Doombot1@lemmy.one
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    2 years ago

    Agh what the fuck guys. I had a months-long convo about when I ordered a custom kitchen knife from an awesome aussie I met on the platform. Thank goodness I remember his username on instagram because everything else is gone completely! Glad I moved to Lemmy.

        • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          Bad move. Should have waited until people had cooled down from being mad. Now they’re mad for more than one reason, which makes them more likely to leave.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            That conspiracy theory that Twitter and Reddit are being killed deliberately in order to stifle the public’s ability to organize mass movements during the lead up to the 2024 election is looking plausiblier and plausiblier. (It’s a perfectly cromulent word, shut up!)

    • DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      When you’re the CEO of a platform you don’t care about anymore and just want to cash out, wrong decisions are a dime a dozen.

  • rbar@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    And here they were saying the private subreddits were causing usability issues…

    The admins, not to be out done, have now just broken search links and user experience for the whole rest of the site. Not just for the private subreddits.

    I can take my browsing somewhere else, but the biggest casualty of reddit’s implosion for me will be the years of help posts in hardware and Linux focused subs.

    • sonnenzeit@feddit.de
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      2 years ago

      Of reddit comments and posts those were the ones that hurt most to delete. The tech support/tutorial stuff. It hurts me a bit to think that in the future someone might search for a particular error message spat out by an installation script or how to achieve a partícular effect in a image editor and turn up empty handed. Power delete suite let me export all my content but besides the effort to repost it’s just not the same because I have only a single piece of the puzzle. What makes sites like Reddit so powerful is the branching back and forth between multiple roles. So you might have a post about a partícular error message and 4-5 different suggestions on how to deal with it each with feedback on how well the solution worked, what you need to watch out for and how to avoid the problem in the future.