I think that sites really shouldn't have guidance on this sort of thing, because nobody would follow it anyway. If you only have upvotes and downvotes, people are just going to upvote stuff they like and downvote stuff they don't like, and any individual will have different rules about what "like" or "doesn't like" means to them.
Waaaaay back in the day, I did like how Slashdot had different categories for voting, e.g. "Insightful", "Funny", "Off topic", etc.
Even that got abused, as comments people didn't like would be modded off-topic or troll.
Then again if given a choice between "I disagree" and "you're a moron for saying that", people would just pick second if it is a disagreement about something they feel strongly about
When my comments get downvoted, sometimes I can figure out why. It's frivolous, off-topic, just plain wrong, etc.
But quite often, I have no idea whatsoever, and I'm always curious about what the issue was. I think potentially valuable information and personal learning is lost.
If the urgency bus drive too fast, will you downvote ?
If he playing music too loud under the rain, will you downvote ?
...
It’s a humorous commentary on how fickle HN karma can be
In practice : Pure jellyfish-brain embrace/reject reaction. A gaggle of flatworms with keyboards
They are points!
At least in theory. In practice it's utterly useless because it's based on incorrect (or possibly outdated) assumptions about the nature and goals of HN's userbase (which I've decided to call the "good hacker" fallacy.)
except HN of course
Reddit interaction is meaningless echo chamber anyway.
What's the point to get your "2c" heard in Reddit? Redditors are the minorities.
Arguably, Hacker News is a lot of an echo chamber too.
What’s the point to get your “2c” heard on Hacker News? Hacker News users are even more of a minority than Redditors.
Archiving helps me know more about myself. Primarily, I use forums as a way to archive my viewpoints and how I have reasoned them. It's spectacularly rewarding when discussions devolve into an argument and I know specifically how and why I came to a certain conclusion, because I can reference thoughts that I reasoned before. Rarely, I find my views challenged in a constructive way that informs and changes the mind of one party or the other...if only on tangential topics. That's always nice.
It's also handy to listen to the echo chamber to get ahold of the zeitgeist of that particular group, which is useful when interacting with other people in real life that espouse particular aligned views. Now you can have an interesting conversation, you might not have had otherwise, which is a practical benefit.
I don't have any affection for Reddit itself, but there are a couple of subreddits where I guess the small but critical mass of folks for a hobby somehow ended up there, and I hope they land somewhere else as Reddit commits suicide.
Imo: there's too much stupidity in the popular subreddits, sharing a space with that is too much to ask
It literally started as a result of the founders taking money from YC and pivoting away from their original idea and to Reddit at Paul Graham's request.
Hear the story here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steve-huffman-co-found...
Everywhere can be an echo chamber, even here.
Reddit is nice for the small subs/communities where you can talk about something niche so you don't have to go register in some archaic phpbb forum that might go away.
The bigger the sub, the more likely it will echo. Much like the bigger the story here the same effect will happen. I think that's just humanity. It is very easy to identify and move on/not follow those subs.
And that is not a snide, snarky question - it is a sincere inquiry. Why is interacting in subreddits with karma gates important to your life?
If you’re trying to have a technical discussion, you’d be locked out.
The more karma/age/posts they require, the more likely the place is a cesspool of some sort.
The whole idea is utterly stupid because it is far too easy to get on popular low effort subreddit and get some points for posting absolute garbage, then go and bother people in niche subreddit.
If you have to wait 2-3 days to comment the moment as they say has passed and very few would read it.
It’s becoming increasingly frustrating to read old Reddit threads about technical issues where someone went back and deleted all of their posts. Trying to guess what was discussed by reading every other comment is a frustrating experience.
So yes, it's acknowledging that you can't take back the scraped data, but you can at least poison the well for others who would use it.
And yes, it would harm current users of reddit. That's kind of the point, because I don't think reddit makes any significant changes unless they get significant pushback from the thing they're trying to sell -- #s of users.
Yeah, that's the point. Users are clawing back the value they gave to Reddit because they are angry with the decisions the company has made.
Particularly in the context of the current API decisions, the thing Reddit is doing is closing off access to that data. A user saying, "fine, but if you're not going to allow open access then I'll stop treating my content like it's open access and I'll remove it" is I think a pretty reasonable response (both for the user and for society). The alternative is Reddit gets to lock down that data, but because it hasn't gone all the way yet and completely locked it down, everyone is still obligated to let them keep that data? It just doesn't make sense.
It was brought up above, but Reddit archives exist. So it's not necessarily like the content is entirely lost. But it's less convenient to access, and that's purposeful, because it's bad for society if we allow commercial gatekeepers in front of communities to guilt users into making it easier for them to lock down and commoditize that data. It can be a difficult line to draw, but there are situations where it's worth just ripping off the band aide and saying, "if a site is not being a good steward of its community, then the site doesn't get to keep using that community's stuff as a way to attract users to the site."
No, I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that being a doormat is less of a net-negative for the world than doing the only thing of actual consequence.
Deleting my comment history is activism against a corporations which has decided to flex its muscle in a way I don't like.
Sure wish there was a better way to advance things.
For Reddit specifically, if I needed to, I would look up old comments in Pushshift if I could remember enough information to locate them - keywords, approximate date, subreddit, username. It's somewhat annoying that this service no longer exists. Though there are dumps, and backups of those dumps, so hopefully someone will release a similar search tool for these, eventually. Perhaps also including the data scraped by Archive Team. Maybe I'll have a crack at it myself as a side project.
[0]: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...
It runs client-side in the browser and has filter & export functionality if you want to retain anything.
It's a lot easier than deleting all your comments before deleting the account, and as others have said, it preserves the conversation for future people.
I'd much rather learn what a bunch of deleted accounts thought about in a thread from 10 years ago than getting only a partial conversation.
If you can build an app (or clone what someone else has built) that contains your key, you can proceed. This is fairly high friction for mobile apps, like building/patching an .apk and side loading it.
The risk is very low but the consequence is high if you get targeted online in various ways (someone has a grudge and doxes you, or you are the target of a social media pile-on)
Things haven't changed that much.
In general though I just think the fear is way overblown. The damage to society of everyone selling Fear Uncertainty and Doubt is real & heavy, is a burdensome tone. The damage of so many people jumping into the black hole is real. And most of us are not going to be targeted people, and our transgressions even at their worst online are really nowhere near a real danger to us.
But having an online existence, being part of the written/online universe is a risk. Yes. Opting out & becoming nothing is a very easy available way to get rid of risk.
I still think it's a farce of high degree how much fear are swallowing. I think it's colossally disproportionate to the risk. We also don't get to societally wrestle with questions of grace & mistakes & maturation if we insist on the supreme personal security of having said nothing.
Oh, sure, I agree. I just think they aren't as great as some people think.
> But having an online existence, being part of the written/online universe is a risk.
This is true, and is why I've never used my actual, real-world identity in any online fora. Instead, I have a handful of alternate (but persistent) "personalities".
It's the only way I am OK with saying what I really think about anything. If I were readily identifiable, I wouldn't participate in any public online discussions. The risk is just too great.
For example I just recently went searching for a solution to a problem, and found 3 reddit posts with what must've been solutions because there were "awesome, works great!" responses, but I'll never know what those solutions were because the user had deleted their posts.
I mean, we could all just use Signal with disappearing messages enabled I suppose, that would keep anyone from utilizing "our data"... I fear we'll just doom ourselves to asking the same questions over and over and over and over if we can't build lasting, searchable, repositories of knowledge.
The lesson here is that it is fundamentally impossible to build lasting repositories of knowledge on a proprietary platform owned by some entity.
The only solutions that can stand the test of time for the long haul are decentralized systems built on open standardized protocols which are not owned by anyone.
I think that's the intent. If Reddit turns evil, users can choose to punish the platform for that.
Much like the SO incident, it just makes me increasingly hesitant to contribute to any future platform where the only method of redress the users have is self-harm. Seem some good suggestions in this thread though, so maybe we can come up with something new.
Last night I wiped my old and well used account with Android App "Redact": https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.redact.app
Shreddit looks like a good tool for this, just have to tweak it so it doesn't actually remove the data, just replace and leave it.
Would be fun to also build a tool for restoring the content should reddit reverse its idiotic API decision. But why bother doing that when they wont...
If you do, that's a fairly nasty and thoughtless thing to do and I would strongly encourage you to revise your approach to commenting and/or privacy.
Reddit had the privilege of hosting user comments, and they squandered the trust they built. Social networks live and die by the good will of their users, creators/users taking back what they made is the consequence of acting in a way that users don't like. Deleting all my comments out of every conversation I had on reddit and destroying all the value is the point, I don't want Reddit to have that value.
So, "if I can't have it, no one can"? That's something parents typically try to teach toddlers _not_ to do.
The content people have created for free on reddit is literally the only form of leverage they have aside from actually going to the site.
Sure some lost soul could use that tidbit of info, but they'll only have Reddit to blame.
> Sure some lost soul could use that tidbit of info, but they'll only have Reddit to blame.
No, reddit isn't making anyone delete all their content. The person deleting all their content is to blame. They could just walk away, but instead, they're purposefully making reddit worse for everyone.
Yes, specifically because of Reddit's actions. Specifically because Reddit made decisions that made them no longer want to contribute to the site's success and (incidentally) also because Reddit offers no way at all for people to opt-out of furthering the company's commercial interests and no way at all for people to refuse to reinforce the network effect keeping the site afloat without also damaging the community.
You seem to be making a good case for just living with bad corporate decisions for somehow that being a greater, or worthy good.
That is legit, but I see a large percentage of users do not agree.
They get to do that.
If someone becomes suspicious that they know an account holder, watching recent posts can lead to doxing. Deleting can be a safety mechanism.
I like how HN allows deletes for some time. At multiple occasions I have deleted some comment that was flame or stupid after 10s and saved others the trouble of reading it.
Just like when you contribute a brick to build a house only to yank it out later on because "it's yours". Yeah, you can do it, but it's a selfish move disrespectful of other contributors.
Not just mass archival / reads, but also database writes from Shreddit usage, etc.
I would prefer short-lived anon accounts but have been too lazy to write a script to transfer those myself.
> OP: Posts a question
> Anon: [deleted by shreddit/PowerDeleteSuite/whatever]
> OP: Thanks, that solved my issue!
It's a modern version of https://xkcd.com/979/ !
and archives on different sites arent used to link to a current digital trail
Like if you were running for political office, nobody is going to start with the archive to try to match to an unknown current user that they further want to link to the candidate. They’ll start with the candidate and try to link to a current username and then maybe extend that to archives of related usernames.
But if you really nuke and start over you’re fine, people just aren’t that motivated. Your own witness protection program.
I rotate all my accounts every year or so, same with this one.
Be careful. Shreddit does not get rid of all reddit comments, only the ones on your profile. Reddit stores a list of the last 1000 comments and posts you've made to your profile and that list is what Shreddit and 99% of reddit 'deletion' tools use. To truly remove all your comments and posts from reddit, look into reddit-shreddit [0]. Despite the similar name, it is completely different and leverages all your posts and comments from a reddit data request to delete all of your reddit posts and comments. It is infact the only method I have found, except for perhaps a GDPR deletion request, that is truly a complete deletion.
However, this only covers the deletion from reddit itself. There have been periodic reddit archivals ever since it was created. Up to 2015 they were done yearly, ever since they have been done monthly. Since they have always been up for download, all of your reddit data will still be out there, however you can remove your data from the main source of these archives called pushshift. I haven't done it personally but I've seen it said on reddit, you can email the dev of pushshift or dm him on reddit and he will remove your information from his archive.