Reddit recently removed years of chat and message archives from users’ accounts without warning as part of an infrastructure upgrade. Many Redditors were upset to discover that their chat histories from before January 2023 were no longer accessible. Reddit claims they only migrated data from 2023 forward during the transition to the new chat infrastructure. Some users were able to retrieve some of their old messages by requesting their Reddit data, though others reported that not all messages were recovered. Along with this change, Reddit has recently made other unpopular decisions like ending Reddit Gold, showing a lack of communication and consideration for users’ sentimental attachment to their online data.

      • PelicanPersuader@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I got into a disagreement with someone in a thread once and for a year or two, they’d just message me at random times to yell at me and accuse me of making them suicidal. I eventually blocked them and should have done it sooner. Aside from that, most other messages were just people sharing in game names for multiplayer stuff and Animal Crossing dodo codes.

    • chris.@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      you’d be surprised, I’ve heard from other reddit users that entire discord servers, wikis, & other communities would first start from reddit group chats so apparently there were a lot super involved in it. one of the big community partnered discord servers I was in told me the only reason they were on discord at first was because reddit chat made it hard to search old messages

    • lorez@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I did. I was contacted several times by people who read my post about central serous chorioretinopaty, an eye pathology I have. People asked me for advice, we exchanged our experiences, they asked me how I was faring. I wrote that post in 2014. Last contact was some month ago.

      • reverendsteveii@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I’m an occult nerd and my reddit chat was moderately active with discussions about that. It wasn’t extremely popular, and it never turned into a persistent thing with more than two people, but it seemed like reddit chat was a good way to break the discussion out into a 1 on 1 where appropriate.

        • lorez@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yep, it was. I dunno if it would be best to open an instance about my eye disease or what, wait for Lemmy to have a chat… It’s often misattributed: people believe opticians need to resolve the issue while it’s stress related. So, in a way I could help.

    • digdilem@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      They still have it. I did a gdpr request then overwrote and deleted all my posts. Then deletedy 11 year account. A couple of weeks later I got the request contents, which contained every post, every comment and every DM. Reddit dies not delete when it’s supposed to.

      • Can-Utility@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I don’t know if that’s across the board. I overwrote and deleted my accounts after Apollo shut down. Waited a week, checking in periodically, to see if any of my content made it back into my accounts. After a week of nothing resurfacing I felt safe deleting my accounts.

  • mana@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    This sounds like it would hurt Reddit more than the users since a lot of value was in being able to search archived solutions to obscure problems.

    • k_rol@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      It’s just the chat though, not posts comments. I’ve probably used chat 3 times since it exists, I couldn’t care less about the history. I’m sure most don’t mind. Still, Reddit sucks.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      If I understand correctly, this is only about private chats and private messages. Public comments you still have to blank/delete personally, and Reddit seems to be keeping restoring them.

  • chris.@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    man, what a shitty move. i had some chats that i wanted to keep in case i needed them in the future but forgot to back up :(

  • reksas@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    All worthwhile content from reddit needs to be gathered and archived somewhere outside their reach or it will be lost.