Today, not in a moment of necessity, but a moment of protest, I logged in to Reddit because I found tons of comments and posts listed on old Reddit when you sort by top or controversial.

I logged in to Reddit to destroy even more of my comments that were missed by Power Delete Suite.

It seems a lot of people are doing this. I’ve seen some interesting stuff here and Reddit with screenshots of deleted comments with “this solved my problem” below the deletion.

The way I look at it, ALL of my content was posted via Apollo, just like all of my comments and posts are through WefWef here. If Reddit admins felt the API shouldn’t be free, then my submissions are also not free for them to monetize and get traffic from.

I know for a fact I’ve had 100+ #1 ranked longtail SEO posts in Reddit before I deleted everything. Many of them were getting tons of traffic based on the amount of follow-up private messages received years later.

I do expect Reddit’s traffic to go down as a whole because of everyone leaving but also because of how many removed their content.

That IPO of theirs is going so well.

  • reedthompson @reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    This makes me sad. Information is being erased that will keep people who could’ve been helped by it from ever finding it.

    The people who it will hurt the most have nothing to do with Reddit.

    • megane-kun@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Sad, yes. And I’m willing to admit that it would hurt the people who have nothing to do with Reddit.

      But if it keeps those people away from Reddit, see Reddit as not the place to find information, see Reddit as a place that was, full of [deleted] comments, see Reddit as an awful dumpster fire, it is worth it.

      It’s too easy to see Reddit as the Library of Alexandria, but it isn’t. It was a place where people willingly shared information to other people, sure, but it now isn’t, and it’s more important for people to be made aware of that: It is no longer a place for sharing information.

      EDIT: Typos and shit.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I originally left some posts I thought may be useful but I deleted them now. We need to bite the bullet and build that knowledge up again here. If we leave the content behind, people will keep going to reddit as their first stop and keep asking questions there + feeding the ads instead of coming here.

      • GeneralChaz9@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yea, I’m leaving my account active but just not posting with it anymore. I only use reddit on my desktop now to view the few subreddits that have not moved to a new site/forum yet.

        There’s too much useful information on reddit going away. I understand the sentiment and the act of protest, but it’s still painful to the common man.

    • pizzatime@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I know it sounds like a shitty thing to do but the point is to hurt these people who are looking for help, who will then look for and hopefully contribute to a community elsewhere, which will harm Reddit in the long run. it sucks for people looking for help in the meantime

    • Nano@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Completely agree, it’s like when Youtube removed dislikes, it’s not helping people, it just makes things more complicated.

      • megane-kun@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        There’s one important distinction to be made here:

        • Youtube, the company, removed dislikes.
        • Reddit users, individually, out of their own volition, removed their comments.

        You’re free to leave your own comments over there, no one’s forcing you to delete them. Youtube, on the other hand, forced their decision on others, regardless of whether they wanted it or not.

    • MagicalPanda@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yep. This is the reason I left all my posts and comments up on Reddit. I can get over the fact Reddit is making money off what I posted if I am helping people in the future.

    • Imgonnatrythis@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, would be nice to have a script that went through old comments and just addended them to say " edit - July 2023: please don’t respond to this, I won’t see it, I’ve moved on to Lemmy. Come [ join me] (Lemmy hyperlink)!

    • Bradamir@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Of the two evils, one being allowing a shitty company profiting off of your work, and the other depriving people of easy answers - The latter is the lesser of the two.

      Chat GPT can give you most answers, otherwise make a new thread.

    • DrDickHandler@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      There aren’t enough people doing this for it to have an effect. You guys don’t seem to see the broader picture. This is nothing.