It's not the beginning of the end for reddit, just another stage. I would honestly recommend archiving data on reddit if there's anything you particularly value up there.
So true. Users deleted so much of their data off reddit during the last big exodous... so much value lost. And the irony is that LLMs have all that data and will continue to realize the value from it that Reddit never could, even when they held it
When everyone holds the data you don't have an edge. They had dedicated users who kept generating new and relevant "content" for a for-profit company with an implied agreement to keep it accessible and discoverable, but they decided to kick them off the platform and try to take hold of what their users had effectively created. That didn't exactly work.
Yeah, that's very valuable information to people trying to solve problems.
But "old content" is maybe not so valuable for engagement-based revenue.
If Reddit wanted to restore the deleted stuff, I suspect that they still have copies of it.
If user sentiment was the barrier to restoring the deleted (say, in non-"sensitive" subs), then waiting until after IPO seems a good idea, so maybe we'll see that now.
>If Reddit wanted to restore the deleted stuff, I suspect that they still have copies of it.
I always read to edit a comment before deleting it. To actually delete it. Make the data in the DB worthless, then delete. So even if the comment is restored, it’s nonsense.
Most of the comment delete scripts work like this.
That's how the scorched-earth delete tools have worked for a long time, since well before the big exodus.
Which is one of the reasons that I doubt that's a barrier to restoring the comments and posts, if they wanted to.
People should think of the delete tools as being a symbolic protest, with the collateral damage of denying random nice people the comments/posts later -- but not as providing protection from Reddit reanimating their comments/posts later, nor denying it to someone who really wants to dig it up.
As others have noted, technical and more quality content, especially the one found in subreddits that are more composed in nature is becoming more scarce and rapidly declining in quality. Bots, constant reposts and low quality comments and posts in contrast are rewarded and gain more exposure than ever. "It's just another phase" is a very light way of putting it. Reddit is becoming - maybe arguably has become - a former shell of itself more akin to 9gag than what it used to be.
