Reddit is the front page of the dead internet

Cautionary personal tale about using Reddit. I suppose this could be extended to any social network use. I have had a Reddit account for a long time. Over the years I have posted numerous posts, tips, helped people answering their questions, etc.

I never liked that Reddit makes it hard to search through your own comments. It's not impossible, but still requires some steps, there isn't an obvious and clear, built-in way.

Some time ago I made a mistake of posting on Reddit from my work computer (once!) while it was connected to the VPN. Turns out that's a violation of Reddit's user agreement. My account has been suspended. I've been trying to send appeals, every day for weeks and yet never gotten any response from them.

Now, I can't even share my older links to any of my posts, comments, etc. As if I have never existed and all the time I spent helping people, debating on topics, sharing knowledge - it was all for nothing.

Good lesson for me here to never share anything thoughtworthy on privately owned social media/hosting. Be careful about what you have on GitHub, the apps you host on Heroku, AWS, Digital Ocean, GCP, Azure, etc.

Always have a backup plan! Be protective of your time and your data. Don't blindly post things thinking they'll remain there forever for you and other people to find. You can lose it all, anytime, for reasons beyond your control.