The vow to extend the demonstration came after CEO Steve Huffman reportedly sent a memo to staff saying Reddit would “get through it” while opining that “like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well.” In response to Huffman doubling down, a user wrote, “Let them fuck around and find out.”
Moderators from well-trafficked subreddits, including r/awww, r/music, r/videos, r/futurology, r/apple and r/NBA (among many others) chimed in to commit to an indefinite protest.
People often reveal more about themselves then they intend to. Most of the time, it’s not a big deal. If you piss off the wrong crowd though, they will hunt through your posts looking for every scrap of info so they can dox you. People want to be able to delete old posts when they realized that talking about which neighborhood they live in, which month they were born, and where they go to school might not have been a good idea.
Reddit is centralized, so unless it was archived there’s a good chance your comments will disappear. Stuff in the fediverse is a lot more likely to stick around somewhere.
I do see what you’re saying but if you were concerned about privacy would you be that open? And reddit is scraped and archived loads so the same is still true there also https://www.unddit.com/ https://www.reveddit.com for example
It’s more about the people who weren’t concerned about privacy until they read a story about someone getting swatted based on linking a bunch of small details across a variety of posts. Most people don’t really think about how posting your favorite restaurant in a thread about the best restaurants in whatever local community of theirs gives bad actors the ability to track them down.
I do agree with you though, Reddit is scraped and archived. It gives people the illusion of privacy, though. That they could just delete old posts and surely nobody will go through the effort to have saved them all. The fediverse throws that out the window. No reasonable person is going to believe that every server will delete your data when you ask.
I think it’s reasonable to yearn for the ability to delete a whoopsie that gives away too much personal information from the internet. It’s not realistic though.