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

  • frazw@lemmy.world
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    1 year 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.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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.

    • Radium@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year 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

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

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

    • ultimate_question@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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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      1 year 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

        • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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          1 year 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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            1 year 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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      1 year 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.

    • ndguardian@lemmy.studio
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      1 year ago

      Same, though I guess maybe? The public posts and comments make reddit more valuable. Private messages don’t.

      That being said, I’m calling incompetence on this one.

  • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Remember when people were critical of Lemmy because an instance admin could shut down and you’d lose all your account history…

    • lunaticneko@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      There’s also a guy who says that Lemmy was created by a communist.

      Well, this time “at least it’s not spez” works even if it’s a fallacy.

    • xavier666@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Absolutely true even now. But Lemmy has good APIs which can be used to download all data. But the core idea is if you really want to have complete control over your data, just roll-out your own instance. Save the data for as long as you like.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sure, it could happen. But it’s not an argument in Reddit’s favor when they’re apparently just as willing to clear out your history too.

  • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

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

  • rbar@lemmy.world
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    1 year 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.

  • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Oh that’s fine. Fuck the Reddit chat function. Only scammers and spammers ever messaged me on that shit.

      • dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The self help bot is worse. It was only used to push vulnerable people over the edge and for pissing off people who couldn’t pm someone who disagrees with them.

    • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I had conversations with my ex on there so on the one hand, it is good I can’t return any more to torture myself with reminders of what a piece of shit I am, but on the other hand my psyche irrationally feels despair because it cannot return to torture myself with reminders of what a piece of shit I am

      • DudePluto@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You lost a remnant of someone you cared about, so it makes sense even though it was bad for you in the long run

        • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for the offer, but for the proper effect you’d have to fall in love with me for a few years, then break up with me, with me getting weirdly clingy and longing in the following “trying to be friends” phase, with me slowly realizing what a bad influence I had been in your life and crashing into the realization that it was pure hubris of me to think I could be deserving of love and in a healthy relationship to begin with. That sort of messed-upness doesn’t come that easy.

  • ShaktiAmarantha@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is such weird self-destructive behavior by Reddit.

    One oddity: I requested a complete archive on June 21 and received it on July 6, and for some reason it includes my incoming private messages going back only to Oct 2021.

    I expected it to be either complete (~2015) or chopped off at 1/1/2023 like chat. Why Oct 2021???

  • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Lmao why would you only announce this in an obscure space that 99% of the userbase doesn’t follow?

    If you’re making a major change to chat the obvious thing to do is send a message via the chat feature announcing it.

    I’m only just learning of this now myself, lost some good stuff with YTers we worked with, shame.

    • ElectroNeutrino@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lmao why would you only announce this in an obscure space that 99% of the userbase doesn’t follow?

      “All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”

  • OGC@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    People should stop using Reddit. Migrate to Lemmy or Kbin and show spez that he’s not as powerful as he think he is

    • kklusz@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I agree (as I’m already here), but unfortunately I think most “normies” don’t really care

      • PrimalAnimist@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        People will not care about something until it exceeds a tolerance. It’s not productive to explain away behaviors with a label. What’s of more importance is why people are tolerant of things that are not in their best interest? How do we change that?

        • kklusz@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Thanks, those are great questions and a better way of framing it. What are your answers to them?

          • PrimalAnimist@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            They are tolerant of things harmful to them because they have been indoctrinated to devalue themselves beneath the capitalistic company. However, this makes people assets to the highest bidder. Start a whistleblower rewards organization that pays people for revealing corporate exploits. The organization is filled with passionate lawyers and talented media personalities who will counter the indoctrination by exposing any and every corp any time they degrade people. Corps install security cameras and all sorts of monitoring metrics with which they can use as puppet strings to manipulate their employees. It’s time for the employees to spy back and get rewarded.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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    1 year 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.

  • Captain_Patchy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Joke’s on them, everything I wanted was copied to local storage when it happened and the rest of my 14 years of reddit posts were overwritten with a single letter a and deleted.

    As some other redditor said, reddit’s only value is our posts. delete all your content and let spez IPO the ashes.