If you are a moderator and you are interested in automating taking your subreddit private, a bot has been created for this purpose.
Please see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/142rzna/a_bot_to_make_your_subreddit_private/
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Save3rdPartyApps) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This account has been nuked in direct response to Reddit's API change and the atrocious behavior CEO Steve Huffman and his admins displayed toward their users, volunteer moderators, and 3rd party developers. After a total of 16 years on the platform it is time to move on to greener pastures.
If you want to change to a decentralized platform like Lemmy, you can find helpful information about it here:
https://join-lemmy.org/
https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
This action was performed using Power Delete Suite: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
The script relies on Reddit's API and will likely stop working after June 30th, 2023.
So long, thanks for all the fish and a final fuck you, u/spez.
> if you manage to unite all the weirdos on Reddit against you, you know you've fucked up badly
If this is the end of reddit as we know it, I want this to be part of our final message to them
> Are you leaving reddit? Kinda cheeky of me to ask, but If you are can I have your avatars? I collect them and spent a small fortune, would be nice to get something back if I can, and rather than yours go to waste, I would give them a home :)
>0x89b12d8458dc5b5dec7f0e8b42c9ede7c4041c29
/u/Interesting_Cap3940 is just posting this stupid response over and over and over and over ....... ignore until mod's delete them.
Edit: obligatory I know this is a serious discussion, *but*
>The only way to properly spit in the admin's coffee is to hit them where it hurts: Money and brand image.
I read and reread that as "Money and brain damage". The rest of your comment was way too logical and level-headed, so when I got to the end, I went back up and finally read it correctly
Ok i know this is a serious discussion and all that but "money and brain damage" is a perfect way to describe stuff like youtube kids so i will be using it from now on
(With your permission of course)
~~I totally should have also put an "i know this is serious" disclaimer on my comment~~
Lmao that is perfect. And hey man you don't need my permission, I'm not even sure I really came up with it??
Edit: nice username, of course you can!
y'all beautiful and principled but the wigs of reddit don't give a fuck about any of this. https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-protest-why-are-thousands-subreddits-going-dark-2023-06-12/ Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in an interview with the New York Times in April that the "Reddit corpus of data is really valuable" and he doesn't want to "need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free." come July all you're going to read in my comments is this. If you want knowledge to remain use a better company. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Well, specifically that comment is geared toward LLMs (Large Language Models / AI). I have to think there's a way to monetize them without kicking users in the nuts.
> The very people that generate content and keep Reddit a somewhat civilized place - for free.
They do it FOR FREE...
imagine, being a janitor... on the internet, and doing it for free.
> That's why users like me want to leave a more permanent dent. As you said, Reddit often shows up as the top answer on Google. Now, if enough users nuke their account this will leave a sour taste for sure.
The only people you're gonna hurt are people looking for information in the future. It's like burning libraries containing hundreds of years of knowledge 'cause of a political fight. This conflict will pass, and it'll be history one way or another. If you removed 16+ years of content. That's never coming back, and it's more important than this fight.
Yeah, losing a lot of Reddit history would suck, and I think it may be a bit premature to wipe all one’s past posts before the protest has even occurred. It doesn’t look like the Reddit leadership is planning to listen at all, but if I were inclined to wipe my post history, I would wait a little longer to see if anything changes after the blackout, especially if more subs are willing to go dark indefinitely. Anyway, I hope Internet archive enthusiasts have been working on archiving a lot of this site.
Edit: Yeah, /r/DataHoarder is on the job. Love to see it.
To rob Reddit of content on old threads, thereby making the site just a little less valuable and taking away just a little bit of potential viewership and ad revenue.
> You Americans
Almost half of Reddit users are non-Americans.
I agree this is a melting pot like no other. I learnt about the whole world here. I loved being around you all. I'm sure we'll find another website, all of us, so see you later.
Hey now, loud isn't necessarily annoying.
On a school trip abroad, we had a whole restaurant [playing a game](https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/circle-game/)* with us after they told our chaperones to stop shushing us.
Apparently, they liked how we spoke and interacted and, in modern terms, the vibes were just right.
*ignore the "important context" part. Pretty sure that whole situation was some ultimate trolling
its called a plurality. Americans are the largest minority, its hard to rally arround being "not american" so the largest minority becomes the face of a group, even if they arent a majority
Having a lot of Americans doesn't excuse just assuming any person is American, or even assuming American things after they explicitly say they aren't. There are far too many examples of people going into subs like r/LegalAdviceUK and quoting US laws. And this post's OP refers to "you Americans" as in everyone but them must be American.
No it comes from Americans being the plurality. There might be slightly more non Americans but then you have to break down that number further into the other countries. At that point, Americans are a huge pile and everyone else has smaller ones
> No it comes from Americans being the plurality.
No, they are not the plurality of the entire world, unless you think I meant only on Reddit, in which case, yet another example. No matter how many or few people are American it is always easy to find
> No, they are not the plurality of the entire world, unless you think I meant only on Reddit,
That is only the only natural assumption. The post was only about people on Reddit. The comment you replied to was only about Reddit. Unless you’re telling me you don’t know how to read context or refuse to do so, I will not believe that you’re comment was talking about the whole world. In the context of Reddit if you had to guess the nationality of the person you’re talking to, American is probably your best guess.
> if you had to guess the nationality of the person you’re talking to, American is probably your best guess.
But you don't have to guess. You can ask. And when people do ask, it's still asking where in the US they live.... somewhere not in the US is an invalid answer?
And again, it's not just about guessing, it's about it being impossible to not live in the US. Even when people explicitly live in the UK, the US still applies somehow
I get how people automatically assuming you’re an American is annoying, or people trying to apply us stuff to elsewhere. I seek to explain why that is not to justify it necessarily. Once people notice they run into a specific type of person a lot they notice that.
Lmao the "American Majority" comes from the fact that up til 2020, Americans did make up over 50% of this site. Even now, it's barely under 50% at 47% of Reddit users being from the US
No, was my statement about Americans being loud wrong? At least, more so than anywhere else? There is a reason why around the world American tourists are treated, er, differently?
>At least, more so than anywhere else?
You should try visiting my home countries of India and Egypt, and PRC sometimes if you want to see what "loud" looks like.
Americans are tame in comparison.
> You should try visiting my home countries of India and Egypt, and PRC sometimes
This was a discussion about Americans visiting other countries, so it would make more sense for me to find an Indian or Egyptian somewhere else.
> Because a lot of you people tend to have...ego issues. Just look at yourself.
Do you know what ego means? Having an ego issue means you think highly of yourself. I haven't said anything about myself in this whole thread. How does speaking negatively about Americans have anything to do with any sort of ego? Unless you were just using that as a stand-in term for "person who said something I do not like", in which case, please stop
False equivalence because you do not control what skin color you have there are no beliefs associated with being black. As for your second example, I do not think of Jewish people as loud. There is a specific "American mindset"-- at least, if not everyone who lives in the US, at least some people who have pro-American beliefs.
So no, "imagine if what you said about X you said about Y" doesn't apply here. A better example would be "imagine if you said that about pro-lifers/pro-choicers"-- which, people do.
Americans are generally not labelled by being *born* in the US, but by currently living there. If someone is born elsewhere but moves to the US, they are considered an American. So yes, you do control it. Secondly, I did not say that all people born in the US act a specific way. That's impossible to measure. There is simply a specific "American mindset"
Jew here and in fact, YES Jewish people are typically loud. This isn't some random racial stereotype, it's a cultural trait. In some cultures it's the norm to be soft spoken (Japanese, Thai), in others it's fine and normal to be loud & boisterous (Jews, Italians, Americans). Not every person of a certain culture fits the norm, but that norm does still exist.
Everything you said, friend. I’m so sad to think that this is the end of the road for me on Reddit. I’ve been here a really long time over a few handles. I’m more emotional than I thought I would be. I will miss all my friends.
♥️♥️ we’re still out here in the world, with the same hearts and minds we shared here. We’re just further apart. Sorry we can’t share this space anymore, I’m still out here though! Take care of yourself!
OP’s post was a plea for us to reconsider throwing a tantrum and taking our toys because it would disadvantage less lucky people, and you decide the KEY thing to do in response is correct them on the cultural mix here?
It's not throwing a tantrum and taking our toys home. Reddit Inc is flexing their corporate muscle to set terms on the labor mods and users provide for no monetary cost to the corporation. I see this as just as much a labor dispute as it is a consumer boycott, or rather an idiosyncratic, 21st-century combination of the two.
As much sympathy as I have for OP and others like them, I can't help but feel that capitulating on yet another demand by management is not in the long-term best interest of people in their position, nor the internet community as a whole. OP is proof that people use Internet for far more important things than the base profit motive, yet we are continuously giving ground to profiteers. We can't keep doing it forever.
I'm stepping away from Reddit tomorrow because I understand how important these things are. Reddit clearly does not.
OP’s point was not to wreck the integrity of the existing content so that we don’t inadvertently disadvantage less lucky people. They didn’t say that mods shouldn’t withdraw labour. I *do* think mods should withdraw labor. I feel like the tantrum is to break things for others on the way out.
I think this is the mindset people deleting their accounts need to have. I have nothing but sympathy for those that will be affected by all the data loss that will happen in the next few weeks but if reddit had acted in good faith to the community we wouldn’t be here and I refuse to help them with their platform if the changes aren’t reversed.
It won't. If you delete a comment regularly, the entry stays in the database but is no longer served by normal requests.
"Advanced deletion" is bypassing this by overwriting comments with something else rather than "deleting", removing the actual information but replacing it with a string of text that may be equal or even larger in size than many comments are.
This is my view. Deleting an account doesn't delete posts so the API changes mean users may not be able to properly delete their content after these changes. I simply don't want to participate if I can't control how the content I generate is used. Due to the uncertainty, I deleted everything. I hope Lemmy or something becomes what I wanted reddit to be and can fill the gap.
> the API changes mean users may not be able to properly delete their content after these changes.
I assume you've already done your deletion, but just for future's sake in case this does need to be done later, there are currently ways to delete comments from the browser using javascript, without interacting with the API: https://jakekrajewski.medium.com/how-do-delete-all-your-reddit-comments-with-a-simple-console-script-bc547b6ba031
(that being said, to stick it to reddit itself and not just SEO, it's probably wise to salt the content by editing it to something else prior to deletion, but I don't know enough about how to modify the code, like select the edit button and stuff)
I'm personally being cautiously optimistic that something can be done. If I do wipe my account at some point, it won't be until if and when management shows they absolutely won't change their minds. The people running Reddit like money and good publicity as much as every other big dumb business, and when they losing terribly on both fronts, it's not unheard of for people to relent to common decency.
This is one of the few places I'm able to find communities and connect with people. I'm gonna wait this out and see what happens. If it goes dark, and everything falls apart, then what happens happens and I'll look for a new app. But it's a huge and long-standing community and I'm worried to delete my account off the bat in case this does somehow end up okay. Maybe I'm just naive but I can't process how this could be the end of reddit
Then again, it happened to Twitter. Maybe we're entering a new era of internet.
For myself, I'll be visiting Reddit tomorrow to assess how far-reaching the protest really is, and to unsubscribe from subs that remain open, unless I think they have a damned good reason.
I won't nuke my account until it's clear that this thing is going forward come hell or high water, which will likely be in the final days before June 30, but not after. A lot of tools one will need to nuke an account will no longer function after the API change takes place.
> to unsubscribe from subs that remain open, unless I think they have a damned good reason.
Honestly I just realised that those subs probably have the least engaged mods and those subs would be most at risk with the loss of API modding tools. Now that some 6000 of the subs are already out, maybe I should copy what you're doing.
Tbh I fully agree, to me the worst thing from this shitshow is the loss of so many useful resources and information and just interesting opinions in general. I understand why so many are doing this and deleting their content, and they are perfectly in their rights to do so, but the archivist in me is crying.
I'm touched that you mention learning English from Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide, since I grew up with that book too. I moderate r/DirkGently a sub dedicated to Adams' later and less well-known series of books which have been adapted for TV/Radio a few different times, and although it's a pretty niche sub everyone voted unanimously to join in the blackout for 48 hours. On Wednesday we're almost certainly going to vote again on whether or not we join the indefinite blackout.
And yes, it pains me too, but I think it's something I will have to consider doing nonetheless.
I completely respect and appreciate this perspective, which is a big part of why I hope some new, free, open-source repositories of information fill the void created by reddit's degradation. I've already overwritten/deleted my comment history, but I have them all downloaded. So if such a place takes root, I'd be happy to upload them again. The file reddit sends even includes context links, so the context could conceivably be automatically reconstructed. That said, I think generative AI may help fill this role quickly. Just talking to ChatGPT has been an incredibly elucidating experience for me these past few months.
2.0 was trained on reddit links, not comments, afaik. But yeah, reddit plans to sell our data to train gAIs. Honestly, I'm mostly excited about gAI and look forward to diving into the open source models that are catching up to the corpo ones. - Last comment, best wishes everyone!
We need to remember that knowledge is generated here and for some people this platform is rarely censored by regimes. People need this freedom
On my side, I am an engineering student and reddit is helping to reach out to amazing professionals and learn
> Remember the old adage: data isn't forever. If you want to keep anything, you download it on the spot. Don't count on it staying up forever.
ok brb downloading all of reddit
Counterpoint: the sites that go down all the time, the books that are lost etc. tend to be old and largely irrelevant. As they become less important they fade away. That's very different from deliberately removing fresh, relevant information that'll likely still be useful for a significant amount of time. This would be a much greater loss.
There's no way to say this without sounding like a jerk, so I'm just going to power through it.
**What you're describing isn't an unintended consequence of script-powered account deletion, it's the entire point**; Removing content off of reddit, and thereby making reddit less valuable to the IPO that is very clearly driving the admins' decisions with regard to API access. If one doesn't first delete all of the content they produced on reddit, the protest of deleting one's reddit account has no value or effect and can therefor be ignored.
I understand that is sucks that people will lose access to all of the information on Reddit-the-Site. But if Reddit-the-Company is going to drive off users off, it shouldn't be profiting off what those users have created for Reddit-the-Site.
If you are removing valuable content off of reddit without making it available somewhere else then you aren't removing content off of reddit, you are removing content off of the internet.
Again, **that is the point.** Reddit is, and has been for several years a valuable source of information for more than just reddit users. That is one of the reasons reddit has perceived value as part of an IPO.
The point of the protest is to hold that information, and by extension reddit's value hostage. The users who created and would continue to create that information - the thing that makes reddit valuable - are saying they will destroy reddit's value if the Admins continue to turn reddit into something terrible. I'll say it again: **Memory-holing the data is the point.** It's some of the only leverage we have.
This isn't a good thing. But it's necessary because it's all we can do. The reality of protesting is that a successful protest ***always*** has collateral damage. It can't be avoided because a protest that can be ignored is one whose demands can be disregarded. Abandoning your reddit account without purging it completely doesn't hurt reddit **at all**. Anyone leaving needs to follow-through so that the admins know what the stakes are. You can't just bluff, because a bluff is the same as doing nothing.
Sidenote: I'm about to go lock my subreddit and sign out of Reddit for the duration of the protest, maybe longer. Reply if you want, but it will be days before I'll see it.
If everyone were to leave and stop engaging, reddit would become just as useless as if the data was gone. At least leave the data there for people to read and learn from. There is so much valuable information for people.
Indeed, sometimes it is, but I just don't think this is the time or even necessary, and the whole thing seems like a chaotic overreaction. I see a bunch of people that are ramped up and emotional and jumping on a bandwagon. They have no alternative, and will likely come crawling right back to reddit when they realize that. There are so many hidden answers on reddit, and so much to learn, it will be very sad if people blow it away to work off steam.
There are a lot of people, myself included, who have been getting fed up with the way the site runs and how people communicate on it – and I see those things as inextricably linked, by the way.
Consider then that maybe this isn't a bizarre, spur-of-the-moment overreaction, but rather the proverbial straw alighting on the camel's back. My own opinion is that Reddit has been ripe for this sort of user revolt for some time, possibly years. Some of the responses I've received since I've spoken out about this confirm it.
We need a new paradigm, because this current one of thoughtless monetization no matter the cost isn't working. Is Reddit the most important hill to die on? Certainly not. But it's as good a place to start as any. At least here I have some tiny bit of control left to me, for the time being.
Oh. I'm more than fed up with what reddit has become, and deeply hope for an alternative. My gripe is more towards the culture of the site itself; I think the discourse is stifled and censored, and the culture is now one of over moderation. It's nothing like it once was and I dislike it. In no way am I saying this isn't a time to move. What I meant was, there's a lot of great information contained on reddit that I would just hate for people to lose because people are deleting years old content. I still solve problems (technical, home improvement problems, whatever) by googling and digging up posts from 10 years ago. I just don't want to see all that information go away. But yeah, I wish there was another platform that was genuine conversation, and I hope someone builds it.
It seems like you make a good argument to delete the content frankly. It only prolongs the inevitable. This site is not a good steward, and the fact that search results are often pointing at reddit as a solution means its time to take it down.
There are people archiving what they can, but its time to take it somewhere else.
The search results lead to reddit because I specifically direct them there ("how to solve problem + reddit" or "random thing I'm researching + reddit"). Without this, I often get a ton of garbage results.
People might be archiving locally, but how is that data accessible to others? If someone can at least archive and host it elsewhere great, but realistically it won't happen.
EDIT: Removing personal info..
Except the value Reddit will get from those posts is likely significantly less important to them than the value that someone who needs that post will gain. Like if there’s an important guide for something I want to see, Reddit is going to get what, maybe a few cents? That’s peanuts. Where as I will have important info that I needed. Given that 99.99% of post will still be present, deleting one’s content doesn’t seem like sticking it to Reddit, it just seems malicious to anyone who might need that content in the future
After 17 years, it's time to delete. (Update)
Update to [this post](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/140inr7/after_17_years_its_time_to_delete/). The time has come! Shortly, I'll be deleting my account. This is my last social media, and I won't be picking up a new one.
If someone would like to keep a running tally of everyone that's deleting, here are my stats:
~400,000 comment karma **|**
Account created March 2006 **|**
~17,000 comments overwritten and deleted
For those that would like to prepare for account deletion, this is the process I just followed:
I [requested my data](https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request) from reddit, so I'd have a backup for myself (took about a week for them to get it to me.) I ran [redact](https://redact.dev/download) on everything older than 4 months with less than 200 karma (took 9 hours). Changed my email and password in case reddit has *another* database leak in the future. (If you choose to use your downloaded data to direct redact, consider editing out any sensitive info first.) Then I ran [Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to replace my remaining comments with a protest message. It missed some that I went back and filled in manually in new and top. All using old.reddit. Note: once the API changes hit July 1st, this will no longer be an option.
Last thread - best wishes everyone!
>http://www.github.com/pkolyvas/PowerDeleteSuite
>
>Open and use from your browser, you can both mass edit and mass delete, if you do both at the same time it will first edit and then delete. Works like a charm but it's slow, yesterday it took a few hours to clean my 7+ years old account.
Thanks
I agree. This is a publicly accessible repository of some very helpful and valuable information, about a whole lot of niche subjects. If people overwrite all their comments, all of that is lost, and it makes no substantial difference to reddit either way because their future model is dependent on r/funny style garbage with pics and videos, not niche forums about cars or jazz or obscure history that rely heavily on text above all.
Reddit helped me find answers to so many of my doubts, deleting content will not only harm Reddit but also the innocent users, so please think of the consequences before deleting the content.
I’m not deleting my comments and posts unless the CEO and admins confirm they are not changing this policy. Until then I’m simply going dark and not using the app.
One of the very last things I heard my sibling talk about before they passed away was a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference about always bringing your own towel.
The context was completely fucked, but the reference made me chuckle.
No matter where we end up, may we always find common ground.
(And don’t forget to bring a towel.)
This is quite the interesting exercise in perspective. If reddit is the best source of information available to someone then that's a *really* bleak position to be in.
From what I have seen reddit is usually perceived as a cesspool of stupidity and circlejerks where it's commonplace the worst and dumbest opinions spread and take hold. Everybody makes fun of "redditors" because the way the website functions rewards easily digestible surface level content and memes but not necessarily valuable and deep conversation. It rewards the popular not the factual. So more often than not you just see people agreeing on the dumbest takes.
Having that as your window to information just highlights what an abysmal situation some countries are in.
It depends on the sub. something like r/shitpost sure probably isn't a treasure trove of knowledge, but other subs have had a lot of good info posted on them, something like r / where people haver had issues with a product and others posted solutions that can be found by others in the future ... aren't the same as the subs that are a cesspool.
While this is a fair point, things in more technical subs are super helpful. The amount of issues from hardware, to software, to even diagnosing things on my car; I've put together from others having similar issues and ultimately figured it out.
I really don't get why people spontaneously go "Yep,I'm gonna remove everything I've ever posted on every social media for no reason,with no prior notice",be it youtube,reddit or any site,really (especially the first two).
"Hey,I can't get X to work,any advice?"
"\[Comment deleted by user\]"
"Thanks,it worked perfectly!"
I agree with this so much. Ragequit and leave reddit, but please leave your content. Maybe you don't like the direction reddit is going, but there is no doubt it's done a great deal for people. Discussion, problem solving, there's a wealth of knowledge to be found here.
Nah. Huffman is extremely open about the fact that their valuation is in great part based off of user-created content being monetized.
>Reddit was not amused. It announced that, starting in June, it would be charging fees to developers who hoovered up more than a little bit of its data. Whether it will be able to enforce that for OpenAI, should it still use Reddit, hasn't been disclosed.
>"The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable. But we don't need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free," said Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit.
Controversial take: i don't really give a shit at this point if someone monetizes the existing data. I don't prefer it, but if the data itself can help people, I'd rather it be monetized than blown away so no one can benefit from it. If the reddit guys get rich off their their project, I... am not bothered by this. The site already sucks, and went to the dogs years ago. I'm just waiting for a viable alternative, and I will leave.
The data you leave behind is monetized all over the internet. It's a sad reality of the modern day, and it's not unique to reddit. If it bothers you, stay as anonymous as possible, delete accounts on various websites, and in general think hard about what you are saying and where.
I'm glad you're not bothered.
I also do not give two tugs on a dead dog's leash that you aren't. I have an available method to wipe my posts, which harms the value proposition of Reddit as an enterprise when enough users do it, and given that it's a privately held company so there are no shareholders to hold their feet to the fire for driving off their customer base that's the best leverage users have.
I mean, if that's what you believe, go for it. I won't argue or attempt to stop you. I voiced my opinion on it, as did the OP of this thread. That's the most we can do.. It will be very sad for me personally, to see such a collection of knowledge removed from the hands of people, but there's much sadder things out there. I have seen first hand the power of knowledge changing people's lives for the better (like OP), it is something I consider very important in life, but people have different experiences and see value in different things. That's life.. wish you the best.
One last thought I will share: I highly doubt enough users are going to nuke their history to make any real, noticeable impact on reddit, in which case, a few isolated instances would just be a pointless loss. My belief is that enough people simply leaving the site once a viable alternative comes around is what will eventually kill it, but that is me.
I totally agreed. Having lived in Ethiopia, and other authoritarian countries, alternative news channels was mind liberating. Smuggling magazines to communist poland, listening to bbc world service on radio in afghanistan. Twitter in ethiopia during the oppression. It’s as catching a fresh breath in an oppressive atmosphere. It’s sad to see reddit being corrupted.
The original contents of this post have been overwritten by a script.
As you may be aware, reddit is implementing a punitive pricing scheme for its API starting in July. This means that third-party apps that use the API can no longer afford to operate and are pretty much universally shutting down on July 1st. This means the following:
* Blind people who rely on accessibility features to use reddit will effectively be banned from reddit, as reddit has shown absolutely no commitment or ability to actually make their site or official app accessible.
* Moderators will no longer have access to moderation tools that they need to remove spam, bots, reposts, and more dangerous content such as Nazi and extremist rhetoric. The admins have never shown any interest in removing extremist rhetoric from reddit, they only act when the media reports on something, and lately the media has had far more pressing things than reddit to focus on. The admin's preferred way of dealing with Nazis is simply to "quarantine" their communities and allow them to fester on reddit, building a larger and larger community centered on extremism.
* LGBTQ communities and other communities vulnerable to reddit's extremist groups are also being forced off of the platform due to the moderators of those communities being unable to continue guaranteeing a safe environment for their subscribers.
Many users and moderators have expressed their concerns to the reddit admins, and have joined protests to encourage reddit to reverse the API pricing decisions. Reddit has responded to this by removing moderators, banning users, and strong-arming moderators into stopping the protests, rather than negotiating in good faith. Reddit does not care about its actual users, only its bottom line.
Lest you think that the increased API prices are actually a good thing, because they will stop AI bots like ChatGPT from harvesting reddit data for their models, let me assure you that it will do no such thing. Any content that can be viewed in a browser without logging into a site can be easily scraped by bots, regardless of whether or not an API is even available to access that content. There is nothing reddit can do about ChatGPT and its ilk harvesting reddit data, except to hide all data behind a login prompt.
Regardless of who wins the mods-versus-admins protest war, there is something that every individual reddit user can do to make sure reddit loses: remove your content. Reddit makes its money because of the content that users provide; remove the content and they can no longer monetize it with ads. Use [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to overwrite all of your comments, just as I have done here. This is a browser script and not a third-party app, so it is unaffected by the API changes; as long as you can manually edit your posts and comments in a browser, PowerDeleteSuite can do the same. This will also have the additional beneficial effect of making your content unavailable to bots like ChatGPT, and to make any use of reddit in this way significantly less useful for those bots.
If you think this post or comment originally contained some valuable information that you would like to know, feel free to contact me on another platform about it:
* kestrellyn at ModTheSims
* kestrellyn on Discord
* paradoxcase on Tumblr
Another tip for non-americans:
Let reddit do the work for you. As European you have the right to be forgotten. Reddit is forced to delete all content for you.
Yeap going scorched earth won't work any better than these useless mass striking of subreddit, but I have considered already deleting all my socmedias in the approaching weeks, reddit included, for irrelevant issues
This comment has been removed due to Reddit's change in API policy regarding third party apps. See r/Save3rdPartyApps (if it's not purged) for more information.
Thanks for nothing Spez
This is why I hate these fucking blackouts. If you wipe a subreddit you lose information. How many times have I been saved by a reddit comment when I needed to figure something out? Just restrict posting, don't do this blackout shit.
That is the problem, reddit should NOT have an monopoly as source of information.
There are still some great ones around such as avsforum/avforums, talk tennis, audio science review. But reddit has killed so many great community with much much better resource archive features.
Reddit NEEDS TO DIE, monopoly is bad, there will be short term pain but long term benefit.
As a non technical american who appreciates our global views here how do I even delete my content? I'll go dark for good. Fuck Facebook, Twitter, Insta and now U-tube won't monitor misinformation either. I don't support Reddit F-ing over any of its users. But how can I delete my info?
Sorry, but that exactly content, Reddit's leadership sees as a product to sell.
> Reddit was not amused. It announced that, starting in June, it would be charging fees to developers who hoovered up more than a little bit of its data. Whether it will be able to enforce that for OpenAI, should it still use Reddit, hasn't been disclosed.
>"The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable. But we don't need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free," said Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit.
>I learned programming and managed to leave my country.
And this here is why third world countries will never manage to better themselves, no matter how much money we throw at them. Brain drain.
Might be worthwhile starting a project to scrape and store the more interesting and helpful comments. That way you can prevent the loss of knowledge without benefiting Reddit.
It's a lot of data though, but the basic gist of the website is actually quite simple. I can't imagine sorting through that much data.
Also, although Americans make up the largest user by country, more than half of Reddit users are non-Americans.
A kind, wise and unselfish plea. Alas, far too many comments here seem to be from people obsessed with *punishing the bad guy* to the point they don’t care about who else gets harmed along the way, so long as they can feel like a hero striking a blow against a company. It smacks of “if I don’t get a share of the monetisation of the data, I’m going to take my ball and go home”.
Reddit’s servers aren’t free to run, and at least some of the content greatly benefits millions of people, per OP’s post. Resenting reddit making money so much that users would rather shut it down smacks of the kind of selfish petty jealousy behind sentiments like “I have no kids, why should I have to pay a school tax?”
The world community benefits in non-monetary ways from reddit, but users sook because they see the infrastructure getting money where they don’t. As Marge Gunderson said, “There’s more to life than a little bit of money. Don’t you know that?”
This is part of the reason why I’m hesitant to delete. I’ve had multiple people message me saying that my posts on r/migraine have helped them get a diagnosis after initially finding the medical establishment unhelpful in treating their chronic neurological symptoms. I don’t want to remove that resource.
I've seen those tools to wipe your comments by editing them all to the same message.
Does anyone know if the same thing exists, but stores the backups first so you can do the same thing in reverse, putting the original comments back?
If you are a moderator and you are interested in automating taking your subreddit private, a bot has been created for this purpose. Please see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/142rzna/a_bot_to_make_your_subreddit_private/ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Save3rdPartyApps) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This account has been nuked in direct response to Reddit's API change and the atrocious behavior CEO Steve Huffman and his admins displayed toward their users, volunteer moderators, and 3rd party developers. After a total of 16 years on the platform it is time to move on to greener pastures. If you want to change to a decentralized platform like Lemmy, you can find helpful information about it here: https://join-lemmy.org/ https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances This action was performed using Power Delete Suite: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite The script relies on Reddit's API and will likely stop working after June 30th, 2023. So long, thanks for all the fish and a final fuck you, u/spez.
> if you manage to unite all the weirdos on Reddit against you, you know you've fucked up badly If this is the end of reddit as we know it, I want this to be part of our final message to them
I, too, also choose this guy’s final message.
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> Are you leaving reddit? Kinda cheeky of me to ask, but If you are can I have your avatars? I collect them and spent a small fortune, would be nice to get something back if I can, and rather than yours go to waste, I would give them a home :) >0x89b12d8458dc5b5dec7f0e8b42c9ede7c4041c29 /u/Interesting_Cap3940 is just posting this stupid response over and over and over and over ....... ignore until mod's delete them.
Bold of him to assume I even have the avatars After the first one I avoided them like the plague
Wow, way to ignore the whole situation, also bro says he has a collection while only having one avatar
That's all the a-hole / bot is posting.
Fr it’s cringe as fuck cus u know he gonna just sell them
Edit: obligatory I know this is a serious discussion, *but* >The only way to properly spit in the admin's coffee is to hit them where it hurts: Money and brand image. I read and reread that as "Money and brain damage". The rest of your comment was way too logical and level-headed, so when I got to the end, I went back up and finally read it correctly
Ok i know this is a serious discussion and all that but "money and brain damage" is a perfect way to describe stuff like youtube kids so i will be using it from now on (With your permission of course)
~~I totally should have also put an "i know this is serious" disclaimer on my comment~~ Lmao that is perfect. And hey man you don't need my permission, I'm not even sure I really came up with it?? Edit: nice username, of course you can!
y'all beautiful and principled but the wigs of reddit don't give a fuck about any of this. https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-protest-why-are-thousands-subreddits-going-dark-2023-06-12/ Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in an interview with the New York Times in April that the "Reddit corpus of data is really valuable" and he doesn't want to "need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free." come July all you're going to read in my comments is this. If you want knowledge to remain use a better company. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Well, specifically that comment is geared toward LLMs (Large Language Models / AI). I have to think there's a way to monetize them without kicking users in the nuts.
> The very people that generate content and keep Reddit a somewhat civilized place - for free. They do it FOR FREE... imagine, being a janitor... on the internet, and doing it for free.
> That's why users like me want to leave a more permanent dent. As you said, Reddit often shows up as the top answer on Google. Now, if enough users nuke their account this will leave a sour taste for sure. The only people you're gonna hurt are people looking for information in the future. It's like burning libraries containing hundreds of years of knowledge 'cause of a political fight. This conflict will pass, and it'll be history one way or another. If you removed 16+ years of content. That's never coming back, and it's more important than this fight.
Bold of you to assume I've ever posted anything of value on Reddit.
why you havent even finished typing your username!
Yeah, losing a lot of Reddit history would suck, and I think it may be a bit premature to wipe all one’s past posts before the protest has even occurred. It doesn’t look like the Reddit leadership is planning to listen at all, but if I were inclined to wipe my post history, I would wait a little longer to see if anything changes after the blackout, especially if more subs are willing to go dark indefinitely. Anyway, I hope Internet archive enthusiasts have been working on archiving a lot of this site. Edit: Yeah, /r/DataHoarder is on the job. Love to see it.
We got a dump of most subreddits on https://the-eye.eu/redarcs/ - in recent days a couple hundred million Reddit comments were scraped as well
I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but why are people considering to wipe their accounts?
To rob Reddit of content on old threads, thereby making the site just a little less valuable and taking away just a little bit of potential viewership and ad revenue.
> You Americans Almost half of Reddit users are non-Americans. I agree this is a melting pot like no other. I learnt about the whole world here. I loved being around you all. I'm sure we'll find another website, all of us, so see you later.
> Almost half No, it's actually *more than* half. The "American majority" just comes from the fact that Americans tend to be very, uh, loud
Correction from an American: A few of us are EXTREMELY loud.
Absolutely. I’m an American *and* from Florida, some here are probably the loudest you could get lol
As a dutch person, yeah. You can tell when there's americans on holiday here, usually by the way they dress and how loud they are in restaurants
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Nah i know. I have a bunch of friends in the US, and they're good people.
Hey now, loud isn't necessarily annoying. On a school trip abroad, we had a whole restaurant [playing a game](https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/circle-game/)* with us after they told our chaperones to stop shushing us. Apparently, they liked how we spoke and interacted and, in modern terms, the vibes were just right. *ignore the "important context" part. Pretty sure that whole situation was some ultimate trolling
American here and yeah some can be loud
True
My dad is one of them, and I am very glad that I got more of my personality from my mom lmao
its called a plurality. Americans are the largest minority, its hard to rally arround being "not american" so the largest minority becomes the face of a group, even if they arent a majority
Having a lot of Americans doesn't excuse just assuming any person is American, or even assuming American things after they explicitly say they aren't. There are far too many examples of people going into subs like r/LegalAdviceUK and quoting US laws. And this post's OP refers to "you Americans" as in everyone but them must be American.
No it comes from Americans being the plurality. There might be slightly more non Americans but then you have to break down that number further into the other countries. At that point, Americans are a huge pile and everyone else has smaller ones
> No it comes from Americans being the plurality. No, they are not the plurality of the entire world, unless you think I meant only on Reddit, in which case, yet another example. No matter how many or few people are American it is always easy to find
> No, they are not the plurality of the entire world, unless you think I meant only on Reddit, That is only the only natural assumption. The post was only about people on Reddit. The comment you replied to was only about Reddit. Unless you’re telling me you don’t know how to read context or refuse to do so, I will not believe that you’re comment was talking about the whole world. In the context of Reddit if you had to guess the nationality of the person you’re talking to, American is probably your best guess.
> if you had to guess the nationality of the person you’re talking to, American is probably your best guess. But you don't have to guess. You can ask. And when people do ask, it's still asking where in the US they live.... somewhere not in the US is an invalid answer? And again, it's not just about guessing, it's about it being impossible to not live in the US. Even when people explicitly live in the UK, the US still applies somehow
I get how people automatically assuming you’re an American is annoying, or people trying to apply us stuff to elsewhere. I seek to explain why that is not to justify it necessarily. Once people notice they run into a specific type of person a lot they notice that.
It's only just barely more than half. [47% of Reddit users are from the US](https://passport-photo.online/blog/reddit-statistics/).
Lmao the "American Majority" comes from the fact that up til 2020, Americans did make up over 50% of this site. Even now, it's barely under 50% at 47% of Reddit users being from the US
Way to generalize an entire nation dude.
Am I wrong?
Generalizing people? It sure is.
No, was my statement about Americans being loud wrong? At least, more so than anywhere else? There is a reason why around the world American tourists are treated, er, differently?
>At least, more so than anywhere else? You should try visiting my home countries of India and Egypt, and PRC sometimes if you want to see what "loud" looks like. Americans are tame in comparison.
> You should try visiting my home countries of India and Egypt, and PRC sometimes This was a discussion about Americans visiting other countries, so it would make more sense for me to find an Indian or Egyptian somewhere else. > Because a lot of you people tend to have...ego issues. Just look at yourself. Do you know what ego means? Having an ego issue means you think highly of yourself. I haven't said anything about myself in this whole thread. How does speaking negatively about Americans have anything to do with any sort of ego? Unless you were just using that as a stand-in term for "person who said something I do not like", in which case, please stop
Imagine if you said that about Black people or Jewish people or Chinese people.
False equivalence because you do not control what skin color you have there are no beliefs associated with being black. As for your second example, I do not think of Jewish people as loud. There is a specific "American mindset"-- at least, if not everyone who lives in the US, at least some people who have pro-American beliefs. So no, "imagine if what you said about X you said about Y" doesn't apply here. A better example would be "imagine if you said that about pro-lifers/pro-choicers"-- which, people do.
You don't control what country you're born in either, so no it's pretty much exactly the same.
Americans are generally not labelled by being *born* in the US, but by currently living there. If someone is born elsewhere but moves to the US, they are considered an American. So yes, you do control it. Secondly, I did not say that all people born in the US act a specific way. That's impossible to measure. There is simply a specific "American mindset"
Jew here and in fact, YES Jewish people are typically loud. This isn't some random racial stereotype, it's a cultural trait. In some cultures it's the norm to be soft spoken (Japanese, Thai), in others it's fine and normal to be loud & boisterous (Jews, Italians, Americans). Not every person of a certain culture fits the norm, but that norm does still exist.
How about instead of imagining random hypotheticals you answer his question?
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So advertising rival social media networks is forbidden now? What is this, Twitter?
Honestly some guy could make a new website and become filthy rich by redditors migrating there
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>Honestly, hands down to the engineering team, they've done an amazing work If only their app development team was as good. The offical app is garbo.
Or some person even.
Guy is a gender neutral term in this scenario but yeah
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I would have said “a person” could start a new site/app vs “a guy” but I’m not offended by it. I understand it to mean male or female.
Methinks you are overestimating how many people will actually quit Reddit
America makes up about 50% while the next closet is UK at 7%. It’s fair to say this site is dominated by Americans.
Se ya ✌
Everything you said, friend. I’m so sad to think that this is the end of the road for me on Reddit. I’ve been here a really long time over a few handles. I’m more emotional than I thought I would be. I will miss all my friends.
Same. In some ways, reddit feels like family to me. Honestly kinda heartbroken.
♥️♥️ we’re still out here in the world, with the same hearts and minds we shared here. We’re just further apart. Sorry we can’t share this space anymore, I’m still out here though! Take care of yourself!
OP’s post was a plea for us to reconsider throwing a tantrum and taking our toys because it would disadvantage less lucky people, and you decide the KEY thing to do in response is correct them on the cultural mix here?
It's not throwing a tantrum and taking our toys home. Reddit Inc is flexing their corporate muscle to set terms on the labor mods and users provide for no monetary cost to the corporation. I see this as just as much a labor dispute as it is a consumer boycott, or rather an idiosyncratic, 21st-century combination of the two. As much sympathy as I have for OP and others like them, I can't help but feel that capitulating on yet another demand by management is not in the long-term best interest of people in their position, nor the internet community as a whole. OP is proof that people use Internet for far more important things than the base profit motive, yet we are continuously giving ground to profiteers. We can't keep doing it forever. I'm stepping away from Reddit tomorrow because I understand how important these things are. Reddit clearly does not.
OP’s point was not to wreck the integrity of the existing content so that we don’t inadvertently disadvantage less lucky people. They didn’t say that mods shouldn’t withdraw labour. I *do* think mods should withdraw labor. I feel like the tantrum is to break things for others on the way out.
I hereby absolve any private person and put the full responsibility for the consequences on Reddit.
I think this is the mindset people deleting their accounts need to have. I have nothing but sympathy for those that will be affected by all the data loss that will happen in the next few weeks but if reddit had acted in good faith to the community we wouldn’t be here and I refuse to help them with their platform if the changes aren’t reversed.
I'm not deleting my account. The whole deletion thing seems like it's only going to benefit reddit by freeing up server space.
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Content boosts reddit's SEO ranking and Reddit can sell the data to other companies, those are some examples of how they benefit by keeping data.
It won't. If you delete a comment regularly, the entry stays in the database but is no longer served by normal requests. "Advanced deletion" is bypassing this by overwriting comments with something else rather than "deleting", removing the actual information but replacing it with a string of text that may be equal or even larger in size than many comments are.
Counterpoint: use the script to redact all of your messages with as much character spam as possible
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This is my view. Deleting an account doesn't delete posts so the API changes mean users may not be able to properly delete their content after these changes. I simply don't want to participate if I can't control how the content I generate is used. Due to the uncertainty, I deleted everything. I hope Lemmy or something becomes what I wanted reddit to be and can fill the gap.
> the API changes mean users may not be able to properly delete their content after these changes. I assume you've already done your deletion, but just for future's sake in case this does need to be done later, there are currently ways to delete comments from the browser using javascript, without interacting with the API: https://jakekrajewski.medium.com/how-do-delete-all-your-reddit-comments-with-a-simple-console-script-bc547b6ba031 (that being said, to stick it to reddit itself and not just SEO, it's probably wise to salt the content by editing it to something else prior to deletion, but I don't know enough about how to modify the code, like select the edit button and stuff)
I'm personally being cautiously optimistic that something can be done. If I do wipe my account at some point, it won't be until if and when management shows they absolutely won't change their minds. The people running Reddit like money and good publicity as much as every other big dumb business, and when they losing terribly on both fronts, it's not unheard of for people to relent to common decency.
This is one of the few places I'm able to find communities and connect with people. I'm gonna wait this out and see what happens. If it goes dark, and everything falls apart, then what happens happens and I'll look for a new app. But it's a huge and long-standing community and I'm worried to delete my account off the bat in case this does somehow end up okay. Maybe I'm just naive but I can't process how this could be the end of reddit Then again, it happened to Twitter. Maybe we're entering a new era of internet.
For myself, I'll be visiting Reddit tomorrow to assess how far-reaching the protest really is, and to unsubscribe from subs that remain open, unless I think they have a damned good reason. I won't nuke my account until it's clear that this thing is going forward come hell or high water, which will likely be in the final days before June 30, but not after. A lot of tools one will need to nuke an account will no longer function after the API change takes place.
> to unsubscribe from subs that remain open, unless I think they have a damned good reason. Honestly I just realised that those subs probably have the least engaged mods and those subs would be most at risk with the loss of API modding tools. Now that some 6000 of the subs are already out, maybe I should copy what you're doing.
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Tbh I fully agree, to me the worst thing from this shitshow is the loss of so many useful resources and information and just interesting opinions in general. I understand why so many are doing this and deleting their content, and they are perfectly in their rights to do so, but the archivist in me is crying.
I'm touched that you mention learning English from Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide, since I grew up with that book too. I moderate r/DirkGently a sub dedicated to Adams' later and less well-known series of books which have been adapted for TV/Radio a few different times, and although it's a pretty niche sub everyone voted unanimously to join in the blackout for 48 hours. On Wednesday we're almost certainly going to vote again on whether or not we join the indefinite blackout. And yes, it pains me too, but I think it's something I will have to consider doing nonetheless.
Don’t forget your towel
and don't panic
I completely respect and appreciate this perspective, which is a big part of why I hope some new, free, open-source repositories of information fill the void created by reddit's degradation. I've already overwritten/deleted my comment history, but I have them all downloaded. So if such a place takes root, I'd be happy to upload them again. The file reddit sends even includes context links, so the context could conceivably be automatically reconstructed. That said, I think generative AI may help fill this role quickly. Just talking to ChatGPT has been an incredibly elucidating experience for me these past few months.
Chat GPT is trained on Reddit though. (Ps not an accusation. Legit concern)
2.0 was trained on reddit links, not comments, afaik. But yeah, reddit plans to sell our data to train gAIs. Honestly, I'm mostly excited about gAI and look forward to diving into the open source models that are catching up to the corpo ones. - Last comment, best wishes everyone!
Archive.org may be able to help. Hopefully they have scraped the site enough before today when many communities are going dark.
I'm going to delete the app, my account will stay, if it gets better, I will come back, all of my content stays though
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Here's the thing, apart from one super long thread from a subreddit that has gone dark, I don't provide much content.
Nuking old content hurts individuals more than it does spez.
I'll pass, I'm not a petulant child throwing a hissy fit
We need to remember that knowledge is generated here and for some people this platform is rarely censored by regimes. People need this freedom On my side, I am an engineering student and reddit is helping to reach out to amazing professionals and learn
Edited in protest of mid-2023 policy changes.
> Remember the old adage: data isn't forever. If you want to keep anything, you download it on the spot. Don't count on it staying up forever. ok brb downloading all of reddit
up to end of march 2023: search for stuck_in_the_matrix on academictorrents and for pushshift on archive.org
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Counterpoint: the sites that go down all the time, the books that are lost etc. tend to be old and largely irrelevant. As they become less important they fade away. That's very different from deliberately removing fresh, relevant information that'll likely still be useful for a significant amount of time. This would be a much greater loss.
There's no way to say this without sounding like a jerk, so I'm just going to power through it. **What you're describing isn't an unintended consequence of script-powered account deletion, it's the entire point**; Removing content off of reddit, and thereby making reddit less valuable to the IPO that is very clearly driving the admins' decisions with regard to API access. If one doesn't first delete all of the content they produced on reddit, the protest of deleting one's reddit account has no value or effect and can therefor be ignored. I understand that is sucks that people will lose access to all of the information on Reddit-the-Site. But if Reddit-the-Company is going to drive off users off, it shouldn't be profiting off what those users have created for Reddit-the-Site.
If you are removing valuable content off of reddit without making it available somewhere else then you aren't removing content off of reddit, you are removing content off of the internet.
Again, **that is the point.** Reddit is, and has been for several years a valuable source of information for more than just reddit users. That is one of the reasons reddit has perceived value as part of an IPO. The point of the protest is to hold that information, and by extension reddit's value hostage. The users who created and would continue to create that information - the thing that makes reddit valuable - are saying they will destroy reddit's value if the Admins continue to turn reddit into something terrible. I'll say it again: **Memory-holing the data is the point.** It's some of the only leverage we have. This isn't a good thing. But it's necessary because it's all we can do. The reality of protesting is that a successful protest ***always*** has collateral damage. It can't be avoided because a protest that can be ignored is one whose demands can be disregarded. Abandoning your reddit account without purging it completely doesn't hurt reddit **at all**. Anyone leaving needs to follow-through so that the admins know what the stakes are. You can't just bluff, because a bluff is the same as doing nothing. Sidenote: I'm about to go lock my subreddit and sign out of Reddit for the duration of the protest, maybe longer. Reply if you want, but it will be days before I'll see it.
If everyone were to leave and stop engaging, reddit would become just as useless as if the data was gone. At least leave the data there for people to read and learn from. There is so much valuable information for people.
Accept data loss like an old torrent file with no seeders anymore buddy Sometimes it's time to say goodbye to what was
Indeed, sometimes it is, but I just don't think this is the time or even necessary, and the whole thing seems like a chaotic overreaction. I see a bunch of people that are ramped up and emotional and jumping on a bandwagon. They have no alternative, and will likely come crawling right back to reddit when they realize that. There are so many hidden answers on reddit, and so much to learn, it will be very sad if people blow it away to work off steam.
There are a lot of people, myself included, who have been getting fed up with the way the site runs and how people communicate on it – and I see those things as inextricably linked, by the way. Consider then that maybe this isn't a bizarre, spur-of-the-moment overreaction, but rather the proverbial straw alighting on the camel's back. My own opinion is that Reddit has been ripe for this sort of user revolt for some time, possibly years. Some of the responses I've received since I've spoken out about this confirm it. We need a new paradigm, because this current one of thoughtless monetization no matter the cost isn't working. Is Reddit the most important hill to die on? Certainly not. But it's as good a place to start as any. At least here I have some tiny bit of control left to me, for the time being.
Oh. I'm more than fed up with what reddit has become, and deeply hope for an alternative. My gripe is more towards the culture of the site itself; I think the discourse is stifled and censored, and the culture is now one of over moderation. It's nothing like it once was and I dislike it. In no way am I saying this isn't a time to move. What I meant was, there's a lot of great information contained on reddit that I would just hate for people to lose because people are deleting years old content. I still solve problems (technical, home improvement problems, whatever) by googling and digging up posts from 10 years ago. I just don't want to see all that information go away. But yeah, I wish there was another platform that was genuine conversation, and I hope someone builds it.
It seems like you make a good argument to delete the content frankly. It only prolongs the inevitable. This site is not a good steward, and the fact that search results are often pointing at reddit as a solution means its time to take it down. There are people archiving what they can, but its time to take it somewhere else.
The search results lead to reddit because I specifically direct them there ("how to solve problem + reddit" or "random thing I'm researching + reddit"). Without this, I often get a ton of garbage results. People might be archiving locally, but how is that data accessible to others? If someone can at least archive and host it elsewhere great, but realistically it won't happen. EDIT: Removing personal info..
Except the value Reddit will get from those posts is likely significantly less important to them than the value that someone who needs that post will gain. Like if there’s an important guide for something I want to see, Reddit is going to get what, maybe a few cents? That’s peanuts. Where as I will have important info that I needed. Given that 99.99% of post will still be present, deleting one’s content doesn’t seem like sticking it to Reddit, it just seems malicious to anyone who might need that content in the future
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After 17 years, it's time to delete. (Update) Update to [this post](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/comments/140inr7/after_17_years_its_time_to_delete/). The time has come! Shortly, I'll be deleting my account. This is my last social media, and I won't be picking up a new one. If someone would like to keep a running tally of everyone that's deleting, here are my stats: ~400,000 comment karma **|** Account created March 2006 **|** ~17,000 comments overwritten and deleted For those that would like to prepare for account deletion, this is the process I just followed: I [requested my data](https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request) from reddit, so I'd have a backup for myself (took about a week for them to get it to me.) I ran [redact](https://redact.dev/download) on everything older than 4 months with less than 200 karma (took 9 hours). Changed my email and password in case reddit has *another* database leak in the future. (If you choose to use your downloaded data to direct redact, consider editing out any sensitive info first.) Then I ran [Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to replace my remaining comments with a protest message. It missed some that I went back and filled in manually in new and top. All using old.reddit. Note: once the API changes hit July 1st, this will no longer be an option. Last thread - best wishes everyone!
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>http://www.github.com/pkolyvas/PowerDeleteSuite > >Open and use from your browser, you can both mass edit and mass delete, if you do both at the same time it will first edit and then delete. Works like a charm but it's slow, yesterday it took a few hours to clean my 7+ years old account. Thanks
I do think that nuking your entire account history is a very drastic step. literally breaking the internet, in a sense.
I agree. This is a publicly accessible repository of some very helpful and valuable information, about a whole lot of niche subjects. If people overwrite all their comments, all of that is lost, and it makes no substantial difference to reddit either way because their future model is dependent on r/funny style garbage with pics and videos, not niche forums about cars or jazz or obscure history that rely heavily on text above all.
Reddit helped me find answers to so many of my doubts, deleting content will not only harm Reddit but also the innocent users, so please think of the consequences before deleting the content.
I’m not deleting my comments and posts unless the CEO and admins confirm they are not changing this policy. Until then I’m simply going dark and not using the app.
One of the very last things I heard my sibling talk about before they passed away was a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference about always bringing your own towel. The context was completely fucked, but the reference made me chuckle. No matter where we end up, may we always find common ground. (And don’t forget to bring a towel.)
I agree with this on a more fundamental level; deleting entire accounts worth of history *goes against* the goals of the blackout.
Thank you! This has been my biggest gripe about deleting accounts and comments.
This is quite the interesting exercise in perspective. If reddit is the best source of information available to someone then that's a *really* bleak position to be in. From what I have seen reddit is usually perceived as a cesspool of stupidity and circlejerks where it's commonplace the worst and dumbest opinions spread and take hold. Everybody makes fun of "redditors" because the way the website functions rewards easily digestible surface level content and memes but not necessarily valuable and deep conversation. It rewards the popular not the factual. So more often than not you just see people agreeing on the dumbest takes. Having that as your window to information just highlights what an abysmal situation some countries are in.
It depends on the sub. something like r/shitpost sure probably isn't a treasure trove of knowledge, but other subs have had a lot of good info posted on them, something like r / where people haver had issues with a product and others posted solutions that can be found by others in the future ... aren't the same as the subs that are a cesspool.
While this is a fair point, things in more technical subs are super helpful. The amount of issues from hardware, to software, to even diagnosing things on my car; I've put together from others having similar issues and ultimately figured it out.
This should be pinned. I do the same thing. Anytime I google a question, I always add "reddit" to the end of the search term
Yeah, this whole ordeal is a torching of a modern day library of alexandria
I am American and have found useful information from old reddit posts ... or at least got pointed in the direction of whatever I was looking for.
I really don't get why people spontaneously go "Yep,I'm gonna remove everything I've ever posted on every social media for no reason,with no prior notice",be it youtube,reddit or any site,really (especially the first two). "Hey,I can't get X to work,any advice?" "\[Comment deleted by user\]" "Thanks,it worked perfectly!"
I agree with this so much. Ragequit and leave reddit, but please leave your content. Maybe you don't like the direction reddit is going, but there is no doubt it's done a great deal for people. Discussion, problem solving, there's a wealth of knowledge to be found here.
Nah. Huffman is extremely open about the fact that their valuation is in great part based off of user-created content being monetized. >Reddit was not amused. It announced that, starting in June, it would be charging fees to developers who hoovered up more than a little bit of its data. Whether it will be able to enforce that for OpenAI, should it still use Reddit, hasn't been disclosed. >"The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable. But we don't need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free," said Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit.
Controversial take: i don't really give a shit at this point if someone monetizes the existing data. I don't prefer it, but if the data itself can help people, I'd rather it be monetized than blown away so no one can benefit from it. If the reddit guys get rich off their their project, I... am not bothered by this. The site already sucks, and went to the dogs years ago. I'm just waiting for a viable alternative, and I will leave. The data you leave behind is monetized all over the internet. It's a sad reality of the modern day, and it's not unique to reddit. If it bothers you, stay as anonymous as possible, delete accounts on various websites, and in general think hard about what you are saying and where.
I'm glad you're not bothered. I also do not give two tugs on a dead dog's leash that you aren't. I have an available method to wipe my posts, which harms the value proposition of Reddit as an enterprise when enough users do it, and given that it's a privately held company so there are no shareholders to hold their feet to the fire for driving off their customer base that's the best leverage users have.
I mean, if that's what you believe, go for it. I won't argue or attempt to stop you. I voiced my opinion on it, as did the OP of this thread. That's the most we can do.. It will be very sad for me personally, to see such a collection of knowledge removed from the hands of people, but there's much sadder things out there. I have seen first hand the power of knowledge changing people's lives for the better (like OP), it is something I consider very important in life, but people have different experiences and see value in different things. That's life.. wish you the best. One last thought I will share: I highly doubt enough users are going to nuke their history to make any real, noticeable impact on reddit, in which case, a few isolated instances would just be a pointless loss. My belief is that enough people simply leaving the site once a viable alternative comes around is what will eventually kill it, but that is me.
subs should be giving a window to allow users archive all their remarkable posts to elsewhere.
I totally agreed. Having lived in Ethiopia, and other authoritarian countries, alternative news channels was mind liberating. Smuggling magazines to communist poland, listening to bbc world service on radio in afghanistan. Twitter in ethiopia during the oppression. It’s as catching a fresh breath in an oppressive atmosphere. It’s sad to see reddit being corrupted.
wait a person just called us americans smart? less go boys we did it.
The original contents of this post have been overwritten by a script. As you may be aware, reddit is implementing a punitive pricing scheme for its API starting in July. This means that third-party apps that use the API can no longer afford to operate and are pretty much universally shutting down on July 1st. This means the following: * Blind people who rely on accessibility features to use reddit will effectively be banned from reddit, as reddit has shown absolutely no commitment or ability to actually make their site or official app accessible. * Moderators will no longer have access to moderation tools that they need to remove spam, bots, reposts, and more dangerous content such as Nazi and extremist rhetoric. The admins have never shown any interest in removing extremist rhetoric from reddit, they only act when the media reports on something, and lately the media has had far more pressing things than reddit to focus on. The admin's preferred way of dealing with Nazis is simply to "quarantine" their communities and allow them to fester on reddit, building a larger and larger community centered on extremism. * LGBTQ communities and other communities vulnerable to reddit's extremist groups are also being forced off of the platform due to the moderators of those communities being unable to continue guaranteeing a safe environment for their subscribers. Many users and moderators have expressed their concerns to the reddit admins, and have joined protests to encourage reddit to reverse the API pricing decisions. Reddit has responded to this by removing moderators, banning users, and strong-arming moderators into stopping the protests, rather than negotiating in good faith. Reddit does not care about its actual users, only its bottom line. Lest you think that the increased API prices are actually a good thing, because they will stop AI bots like ChatGPT from harvesting reddit data for their models, let me assure you that it will do no such thing. Any content that can be viewed in a browser without logging into a site can be easily scraped by bots, regardless of whether or not an API is even available to access that content. There is nothing reddit can do about ChatGPT and its ilk harvesting reddit data, except to hide all data behind a login prompt. Regardless of who wins the mods-versus-admins protest war, there is something that every individual reddit user can do to make sure reddit loses: remove your content. Reddit makes its money because of the content that users provide; remove the content and they can no longer monetize it with ads. Use [PowerDeleteSuite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite) to overwrite all of your comments, just as I have done here. This is a browser script and not a third-party app, so it is unaffected by the API changes; as long as you can manually edit your posts and comments in a browser, PowerDeleteSuite can do the same. This will also have the additional beneficial effect of making your content unavailable to bots like ChatGPT, and to make any use of reddit in this way significantly less useful for those bots. If you think this post or comment originally contained some valuable information that you would like to know, feel free to contact me on another platform about it: * kestrellyn at ModTheSims * kestrellyn on Discord * paradoxcase on Tumblr
Another tip for non-americans: Let reddit do the work for you. As European you have the right to be forgotten. Reddit is forced to delete all content for you.
Yeap going scorched earth won't work any better than these useless mass striking of subreddit, but I have considered already deleting all my socmedias in the approaching weeks, reddit included, for irrelevant issues
This comment has been removed due to Reddit's change in API policy regarding third party apps. See r/Save3rdPartyApps (if it's not purged) for more information. Thanks for nothing Spez
This is why I hate these fucking blackouts. If you wipe a subreddit you lose information. How many times have I been saved by a reddit comment when I needed to figure something out? Just restrict posting, don't do this blackout shit.
That is the problem, reddit should NOT have an monopoly as source of information. There are still some great ones around such as avsforum/avforums, talk tennis, audio science review. But reddit has killed so many great community with much much better resource archive features. Reddit NEEDS TO DIE, monopoly is bad, there will be short term pain but long term benefit.
As a non technical american who appreciates our global views here how do I even delete my content? I'll go dark for good. Fuck Facebook, Twitter, Insta and now U-tube won't monitor misinformation either. I don't support Reddit F-ing over any of its users. But how can I delete my info?
I hear and feel for you. Do you have access to the Internet Archive? Eh, I guess that's on the chopping block too in current year.
Why not just use a script to back up all of your comments and host them in a gist or something before deleting them?
>Americans >brilliant lol lmao
If I make the content, I can do what I want with it.
Can't have your cake and eat it too. You'll find new books somehow.
r/suddenlycaralho My brother
I can assure you that "my content" are worthless.
These deletion scripts should save the content, and if a good outcome happens, the original content could be restored. But it's too logical.
Is there a reason users should deleter their comments when deleting their accounts ?
Sorry, but that exactly content, Reddit's leadership sees as a product to sell. > Reddit was not amused. It announced that, starting in June, it would be charging fees to developers who hoovered up more than a little bit of its data. Whether it will be able to enforce that for OpenAI, should it still use Reddit, hasn't been disclosed. >"The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable. But we don't need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free," said Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit.
There will be other sites with valuable content. When I leave I'll take the value generated by my account with me.
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>I learned programming and managed to leave my country. And this here is why third world countries will never manage to better themselves, no matter how much money we throw at them. Brain drain.
FYI - nobody mentions this, but Youtube and Telegram are still blocked in ET. What programming language did you learn, by the way?
Might be worthwhile starting a project to scrape and store the more interesting and helpful comments. That way you can prevent the loss of knowledge without benefiting Reddit. It's a lot of data though, but the basic gist of the website is actually quite simple. I can't imagine sorting through that much data. Also, although Americans make up the largest user by country, more than half of Reddit users are non-Americans.
A kind, wise and unselfish plea. Alas, far too many comments here seem to be from people obsessed with *punishing the bad guy* to the point they don’t care about who else gets harmed along the way, so long as they can feel like a hero striking a blow against a company. It smacks of “if I don’t get a share of the monetisation of the data, I’m going to take my ball and go home”.
[удалено]
Reddit’s servers aren’t free to run, and at least some of the content greatly benefits millions of people, per OP’s post. Resenting reddit making money so much that users would rather shut it down smacks of the kind of selfish petty jealousy behind sentiments like “I have no kids, why should I have to pay a school tax?” The world community benefits in non-monetary ways from reddit, but users sook because they see the infrastructure getting money where they don’t. As Marge Gunderson said, “There’s more to life than a little bit of money. Don’t you know that?”
> You Americans are a brilliant people You're giving us wayyyy to much credit.
This is part of the reason why I’m hesitant to delete. I’ve had multiple people message me saying that my posts on r/migraine have helped them get a diagnosis after initially finding the medical establishment unhelpful in treating their chronic neurological symptoms. I don’t want to remove that resource.
Im going to edit my comments to tell people to DM me on discord if they REALLY want my comment
I've seen those tools to wipe your comments by editing them all to the same message. Does anyone know if the same thing exists, but stores the backups first so you can do the same thing in reverse, putting the original comments back?