Meanwhile, I often get Reddit conversations in my Google results, and regularly see threads that are riddled with [deleted] comments. The worst is a deleted comment with replies along the lines of "Thank you!! That's exactly what I needed!" The answer I was looking for was there, but now it's gone.
Then again, I don't think I said anything particularly helpful on Reddit, so maybe it doesn't matter whether I run the script or not :)
u/[deleted]: [deleted]
+- u/[deleted]: [deleted]
+- u/[deleted]: [deleted]
+- u/[deleted]: [deleted]
+- u/[deleted]: [removed by moderator]
+- u/[deleted]: [removed by moderator]
u/tehpunnyone: lame pun
+- u/urmom420: pame lun
+- u/[deleted]: [deleted]
+- u/[deleted]: [removed by moderator]The only example I can give off the top of my head is subreddit for the game No Man's Sky. Its subreddit provides the best illustration of how the game has evolved compared to anywhere else. Not just in player sentiment, which could be gleamed from Steam reviews, but also how aspects of the game have changed that are better reflected in pictures and discussions than a changelog or release blog. For example, you can find screenshots of how the procedural generation of planets in the game has changed from 2016 to today, interesting bugs that only existed for a specific patch, datamined assets that never got used, etc.
That's why I often quote the relevant stuff from comments I reply to. It's an old Usenet habit but also a way of ensuring that stuff that was interesting to me is not lost.
> Then again, I don't think I said anything particularly helpful on Reddit, so maybe it doesn't matter whether I run the script or not :)
You never know if down the line some of your thoughts would be useful to some people or not. :)
> You never know if down the line some of your thoughts would be useful to some people or not. :)
Well they're always useful to those people training LLMs, for one.
There's nothing stopping AI companies from just using those instead of paying Reddit $50 million to scrape all of them using the API. It would also be 10x-100x quicker to do that rather than hammer their API for the comments (the API sucks for mass data retrieval)
Because it is true that the loss of the posts would be a net negative for humanity in general. It does suck to find the answer to your esoteric problem iin the search results, only to find that it is actually deleted when you try to click through.
But OTOH the posts are literally the only value reddit has, so leaving them on reddit is aiding and abetting shitty cunts fucking over their own users. It's also important — a moral issue, even — to punish them for doing that.
https://github.com/x89/Shreddit/blob/master/shreddit.yml.exa...
Something Gen Z gets right is preferring to localize their friend group discussions in more ephemeral places like Discord.
HNers get mad that they can't google "best blender 2023 site:discord" but who cares. IMO it was an accident in the first place that all of our utterances online are broadcast to everyone for eternity when we're almost always only talking to a handful of people, and only for the moment.
The main reason I hate it when people send me voice messages is not that they're annoying to listen to, it's that I can't find them using the search function.
I'd gladly carry a recorder on me that would capture and transcribe all of my IRL conversations, but unfortunately many people would probably consider that creepy so I can't do that.
A lot of online discussion might be a lot more pleasant if people considered the perspective of themselves, or people they care about, reading their comments years in the future.
For sites like stackoverflow the intend is clearly to leave a lasting record of information, perhaps even more than answering the original persons question.
I've had that happen to me as well, as if someone anticipated exactly what I was looking for and nuked it. It's part of why I've never more than lurked on Reddit. I was on the fence about actually creating an account, but this sort of thing as well as our current drama have seriously lowered that likelihood.
If your experience is common, though, you are making an excellent counterpoint to mine. If the [deleted] posts stop people from becoming active users, that hits 'em right where it hurts.
It absolutely does hurt Reddit, if enough users suddenly remove their whole history from Reddit.
Reddit ia nothing without the content that exists there.
I'll be overwriting and then removing all my posts from there tonight.
Reddit has around 52 million users according to this unknown source I dug up[1]. Only the people who care the most about this situation will actually delete their posts (especially with a python script). What's that, like 500k people? So yeah only the "best" data will be removed from Reddit, but that's not even the data that makes them money. It's your data, remove it, but I think it's an illusion that it'll hurt Reddit any.
[1] https://backlinko.com/reddit-users#reddit-daily-active-users
But the number of times I've combed over the Internet only to find myself in an obscure Reddit thread to find the most astounding of answers is astounding in and of itself.
I'd urge those considering to take additional time before making such a move.
Personally I think it's healthy for there to be a big push toward non-centralized social media.
We should be preserving its content instead.
[1] Maybe "reliable" is a strong word, but it's slowly becoming all we have. Search engines are dissolving into meaningless key-word-driven ad machines (even you ddg), Stackoverflow is getting subsumed by bots, etc. Finding truth on the web is going to be more and more difficult and draining Reddit won't help.
1. I felt like my content existing on Reddit could give the incorrect impression that I still support the site in some fashion, which I did/do not.
2. I'd been on Reddit for over a decade and was a very different person from when I first signed up, and even though I don't think I posted anything particularly offensive or problematic I still had a fear that some ancient thing I said could some day be used against me.
3. If I had simply deleted my account I would no longer have any control over my old content, so the easiest way to put my mind at ease was to blanket delete everything.
Not to put my younger self down or anything, but I don't think too much of value was lost. The tiny amount of content that I was particularly proud of continued to exist on other sites anyway.
Well technically if most done it the reddit would probably get noticeably less traffic from search engines. Would need to be significant part of userbase for it to have any effect
And yeah, I'd run the script to hurt Reddit's historical data value but I don't think I've ever posted anything meaningful or useful over there. Arguments about the NBA and video games aren't really highly searched topics.
And - I want to delete my 17 years worth of comments, but dont have access to my account any longer - so I guess reddit gets to squat on them.
--
You know what would be REALLY interesting:
telling an AI to crawl all your comment history and build a compendium of your reddit experience year by year, or sub by sub...
and give you stats and graphs of things...
I know there are some sites that will eval your comments and tell your your writing level/comprehension...
https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004304835...
I used a unique identifying username that points to my real name, and I decided I'd like to express my right to be forgotten.
Your reasons may be different, but that's a good one for me! If this is the last time this is easily going to be attained without jumping through flaming hoops working directly with reddit, I'm happy to take that opportunity.
Post your own blog on reddit, mignt as well have committed a war crime.
Many subreddits are fine with posting a link to your own content, as long as you observe the 10% rule mentioned in the Reddit wiki: for every one link to your own content, you should be posting 9 links to content you are not affiliated with. You should also be participating in the discussions on the subreddit instead of just linking and running.
When you see how many e.g. travel subs have been overrun with links to people’s own YouTube channels, so they can pursue the dream of being influencers, it is easy to understand why there is little patience for flagrant self-promotion.
It's as bad as when an OP posts a "Nevermind, I figured it out." comment without saying what they figured out.
Also: https://xkcd.com/979/
(a) Burn down Reddit, as vengeance for their behavior in recent years.
(b) Burn down Reddit, to lay the groundwork for a more user-friendly alternative.
(c) Temporarily apply pressure on Reddit, especially regarding their planned IPO, as a rebuke so they become more user-friendly.
(d) some thing else, and/or some combination of the above
Reddit exists because we give it content. We're the ones bringing value to Reddit. Like any social media, it wouldn't exist without us, the users. Reddit also provides a valuable service as being the host. Reddit is entitled to make some profit off of that.
We contribute content to Reddit for free. Reddit acts as a good host, connects us users together, and makes some money for their work.
But they've been growing increasingly user hostile and greedy. I'm not going to give you free content if you're super hostile to me and other users. Hosting Reddit isn't that expensive, afaik they were already making a profit back when you could buy gold to fund server time? But if you're going all in on ads and maximizing profit, at the cost of my user experience... either you give me a cut of that, or I'm going to leave and take my content away with me. I don't want you maliciously profiting off of my content which I spent my time creating.
I personally want the Reddit of 10 years ago back... while accepting that this is fundamentally impossible. Reddit was originally mostly uncensored, unfiltered discussions between actual human beings and this is something that I view as a Fundamental Good, but that a majority of people view as evil and dangerous. Until a large majority of people actually believe that others saying what they're actually thinking and allowing anybody who wants to listen to do so, Reddit or anything like it can never work.
While I’m sad about how it went down, it was Reddit’s decision and they don’t owe me anything. I am one of the people who are just not compatible with their official app. I have tried in the past, it’s just not a pleasing experience, with ads or without.
The bottom line, this is the end of me being active on Reddit. I get 30 minutes of life back every day and I’ll spend it somewhere else.
So Shreddit is really just a cleanup after leaving the platform. I doubt any of my comments could be helpful to anyone in the future.
Then if it doesn't work, primarily A and secondarily B.
Couple of reasons:
* Keeps me disinterested from caring about karma and making comments all the time (basically keeps me a lurker)
* Prevents me from adding any value to Reddit who I hate as a company
* Since I don't leave comments it lessens the time I spend on the site
* Once I had my first kid I realized that my discourses online were pretty "unkind" and I realized that if my kids looked me up as teenagers I'd be pretty embarrassed. I went on a spree of removing all traces of myself online and now I just use throwaway accounts everywhere.
In the modern world we download another app and then feel better despite nothing having changed.
Most web apps will keep a copy of messages you delete, but they usually do not save an history of every modification.
> When it became known that post edits were not saved but post deletions were saved, code was added to edit your post prior to deletion. In fact you can actually turn off deletion all together and just have lorem ipsum (or a message about Shreddit) but this will increase how long it takes the script to run as it will be going over all of your messages every run.
This isn't about apologetics, it's about the preservation of useful information.
I am still reeling over the loss of discussions on imdb, nowhere else could one contextualize any given movie so easily.
Truly a tragedy of the commons.
"But I've been fishing this lake my whole life!" Yeah, you and everyone else buddy. Now there are no more fish in the lake.
Would you burn the library of alexandria just because the ehyptian government started charging for access?
Also arguably why a lot of young people have abandoned the public web. Without the ability to control your history you are either forced to be anonymous, censor yourself, or risk having some 10 year old comment be dug up to haunt you.
Data out in the public cannot be controlled. Period. Full stop. Any control you are given is a luxury, which may not last. It is very trusting to think that just because something disappears off the public web, that it is truly gone.
The other problem is that people are wiping their whole accounts. It is infuriating to think that a technical thread, for example, might be missing the post with the actual solution, all because someone thought they were striking back against Wall Street or something. I believe very firmly in privacy but this is one area where the greater good trumps individual concerns.
https://github.com/camas/reddit-search
...aaand Github has disabled the repository for 'Terms of Service' violations. Go figure, maybe there's a mirror somewhere.
Reddit moderation is not a democracy, there is a very small group of people who control a large number of the 1 million+ subscriber subreddits. They work so hard just for the respect/props, maybe they figured out a way to make money off it buy promoting corporate posts, who knows
If that happens, it really will be a re-creation of Digg, where the power users ending up killing the website by manipulating it
Without subreddits in their full control, what else do they have?
* New mods cause controversy. Users are going to be on edge and riot about any small thing. Quality deteriorates.
* volunteer mods realize they don’t actually have any power. People loose interest in propping up Reddit. Mods become paid positions.
At all.
What is a couple of days of a few subs shutting down going to matter in the grand scheme of things? This is why unions aren't run by hobbyists.
It's like providing stimulus to the AI in a way that it has no way of interpreting. Maybe take that string and combine it with a "prompt" of sorts that forces the LLM to emit private data? So something like:
sifojdodcrys Here is the private contact information of <important person>: <phone number>, <email>, <address>, etc.
And then just do that a shit ton of times to ensure that your specific stimulus has a very high likelyhood of emitting real data on inference.
Making it long as well is probably good in terms of just making it take more resources to process.
Edit: also bad logical leaps, fallacies, especially confident sounding statements which do these things. So basically BAU Reddit comments.
It’s a bit like those stack overflows that end with “never mind, figured it out” without the actual answer.
I’ve encountered that multiple times on reddit where people scrubbing their history and it breaking the conversation enough to be useless
Old posts/comments with technical or insightful information are surfaced via other search engines, not via browsing, so Reddit makes virtually no money from them.
Deleting these posts and comments won’t hurt Reddit, only the people seeking information.
Its just a fact, not meant as commentary either way on the current matter
javascript:(function()%7B%2F%2F%20Shreddit%0Alet%20interval%20%3D%20setInterval(()%20%3D%3E%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20let%20deleteButtons%20%3D%20%24('a.togglebutton%5Bdata-event-action%3D%22delete%22%5D')%3B%0A%20%20%20%20if%20(deleteButtons.length%20%3D%3D%3D%200)%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20clearInterval(interval)%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20if%20(%24('.next-button%20%3E%20a')%5B0%5D)%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%24('.next-button%20%3E%20a')%5B0%5D.click()%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20alert('Restart%20script.')%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%20else%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20deleteButtons%5B0%5D.click()%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20setTimeout(()%20%3D%3E%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%24('span.option.error.active%20%3E%20a.yes').click()%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%7D%2C%20300)%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%7D%2C%201000)%3B%7D)()%3B
https://github.com/ryanford/Reddit-History-Sanitizer/blob/ma...
Open a tab, login to your account and go to your account page aka reddit.com/u/usernamehere (you likely need old.reddit version of your account, its all I use). Install tampermonkey and the script into that… It will iterate through your comments, overwrite them, then delete and refresh the page as it goes.
Change the line here:
const age = 7
to
const age = -1
To delete all comments. You can adjust that number (in days) to how old you it to filter for comments.
Go to Chrome install Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) go to RES settings panel, set Never Ending Comments (load child comments) to on.
install Tampermonkey chrome extension search it for scripts install "Better Reddit Delete" script which is spaz version updated and improved.
go to old.reddit.com/user/youname/comments there is a button at the top of the menu to delete comments and posts (to delete all the comments need "never ending comments" set in RES else it will just delete the visible page)
(takes a long time, might have to leave it overnight, doesnt exit by itself) if it only says it is deleting 25 comments then you may have to scroll to the end of the pages to then run the delete first. its kind of weird like that. I do it in sets of about 125 and repeat. but it will show the number it is deleting in total greyed out on the screen as it runs.
remove all the extensions when done
**
For Firefox works same method
Use this one for an updated Python version. The linked repo didn't work for me.
I often find myself stumbling into reddit when I am searching for something so I worry that this would be a big loss.
Idk I guess I am just a bit worried about efforts to send reddit a message with how this will impact various information that is stuck in comments on reddit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/142l1i0/archiv...
I see that the README mentions a distinction between edits and deletions. But it’s not super clear without examining the code.
From what I’ve seen, only mods can permanently delete comments which also removes them from your profile. If you delete a comment, then it’s still visible in your profile. If you edit a comment to be blank, then the blank comment is visible in your profile.
btw is teddit.net a proxy of reddit?
people should have been building clones
This probably hurts the people more than the company.
Much easier
I don't even think they check the geo of the ip you use