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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Reddit removes years of chat and message archives from users' accounts::undefined

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[-] frazw@lemmy.world 161 points 1 year ago

My gut tells me they are not deleted but rather simply no longer publicly available. Can't have these pesky AI bots training for free.

[-] dhork@lemmy.world 113 points 1 year ago

I think it's the opposite. These are private chats that can't be sold to the AI, that's why Reddit thinks they're worthless.

[-] Radium@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 year ago

More likely just moved to cold storage to save money. It’s expensive to keep data in an easily accessible database. If you don’t need to access it you can move it to object storage for pennies on the dollar and still keep it accessible for whatever nefarious data brokers you want to sell it to in the future

[-] muddybulldog@mylemmy.win 42 points 1 year ago

They’re implementing new chat infrastructure and only replicated 2023/01/01 forward. It’s in the article.

[-] towerful@programming.dev 30 points 1 year ago

Oh man.
To be able to have a long running project and decide to truncate years worth of data...
Just, drop it like you never need it again.

Apart from working at Reddit, sounds like a dream

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[-] db2@lemmy.one 117 points 1 year ago

Many of those left on reddit, not all but many, are the ones who were happily shitting on the mods who were protesting. Fuck those trolls, they voted for the Leopard Party. The rest of us did a data request like it said when the shenanigans started because the writing was on the wall.

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[-] chordnine@lemmy.world 104 points 1 year ago

I'm blown away by how it seems Reddit makes the wrong decision all the time.

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[-] Kissaki@feddit.de 89 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Mashable confirmed with Reddit that messages and chat history are no longer available if they were made prior to January 1, 2023.

Retain only half a year worth of content? What the fuck? That's absurd.

In our continued pursuit of empowering communities, we are transitioning to a new chat infrastructure, shared in our previous updates here and here. In an effort to have a smooth and quick transition to this new infrastructure, …

If you can migrate 6 months' worth of data, how is older data any different? The data is there, in the same form. The timespan should not matter at all. It's either the same form, or interfaced to transparently integrate into the existing system - which would allow migration all the same.

A Reddit spokesperson forwarded Mashable a changelog announcement(opens in a new tab) made on June 22 where the company shared that these messages would be removed.

Absolutely absurd.

announcing removal of 18 years of content, of central functionality, announced just 20 days ago, in an obscure place, and after random uninteresting flair navigation and chat channel announcements spanning multiple paragraphs and screenshots.

Baffling.

Acting as if they were managing a personal project that only they themselves use.

[-] inverimus@lemm.ee 29 points 1 year ago

They will sell access to that 18 years of content. They don't want it able to be scraped in any way.

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[-] xavier666@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago

In our continued pursuit of empowering communities, we are transitioning to a new chat infrastructure, shared in our previous updates here and here. In an effort to have a smooth and quick transition to this new infrastructure

Just standard verbose bullshit PR talk

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[-] Hyggyldy@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Posting notices like the Vogons.

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[-] TemporaryBoyfriend@lemmy.ca 88 points 1 year ago

But they were restoring all my posts and comments for weeks after I deleted them.

[-] ndguardian@lemmy.studio 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Same, though I guess maybe? The public posts and comments make reddit more valuable. Private messages don't.

That being said, I'm calling incompetence on this one.

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[-] Tyler_Zoro@ttrpg.network 79 points 1 year ago

In an effort to have a smooth and quick transition to this new infrastructure, we will migrate chat messages sent from January 1, 2023 onward. This change will be effective starting June 30th.

It really seems like everything reddit is doing is rushed and always chooses to harm the users as a default. It's as if they're actively sabotaging their own platform.

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[-] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 77 points 1 year ago

Remember when people were critical of Lemmy because an instance admin could shut down and you'd lose all your account history...

[-] lunaticneko@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

There's also a guy who says that Lemmy was created by a communist.

Well, this time "at least it's not spez" works even if it's a fallacy.

[-] another_lemming@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Weren't they a tankie? I've heard about it a couple of times on Reddit before joining the fediverse but I don't have proofs myself.

[-] Madbrad200@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

They are yes. They're also admins of the oldest lemmy instances, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml (ml stands for "Marxist-Leninist").

[-] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago

The important point is Lemmy is not beholden to them. By design.

If they fuck with something down the line, it can be forked.

Like how Emby's attempts to kill itself for profit birthed a fork that came to be known as Jellyfin, which now overshadows it.

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[-] qprimed@lemmy.ml 64 points 1 year ago

whelp, the real "landed gentry" have spoken. now back to the fields, serf!

[-] rbar@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago

And here they were saying the private subreddits were causing usability issues...

The admins, not to be out done, have now just broken search links and user experience for the whole rest of the site. Not just for the private subreddits.

I can take my browsing somewhere else, but the biggest casualty of reddit's implosion for me will be the years of help posts in hardware and Linux focused subs.

[-] Haui@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 year ago

I mod a linux sub over there. Any tips on what to do?

[-] sparemethewearysigh@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago

Make Lemmy alternative and migrate here! Sorry that’s not really a tip, but still it’s a good idea!

[-] ChrislyBear@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://redact.dev Edit all your posts and comments with a link to your new home here.

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[-] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 57 points 1 year ago

Oh that's fine. Fuck the Reddit chat function. Only scammers and spammers ever messaged me on that shit.

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[-] Renacles@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago

He really saw Elon destroy Twitter and decided to try a speedrun.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 37 points 1 year ago

Only chat history I had there was spammers trying to sell me crypto.

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[-] quitaxd@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago
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Man fuck those fascists. I am glad for every day that I am not on there writing content for them. Now granted my content might be shyte but it still drove revenue. 😆

[-] MyPornAlt@lemmynsfw.com 19 points 1 year ago

I’m doing a full history delete using my data request as a reference to all my comments. 17761 comments. Many stupid crap, but also many helpful tech related stuff that will no longer drive traffic to Reddit.

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[-] ShaktiAmarantha@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago

This is such weird self-destructive behavior by Reddit.

One oddity: I requested a complete archive on June 21 and received it on July 6, and for some reason it includes my incoming private messages going back only to Oct 2021.

I expected it to be either complete (~2015) or chopped off at 1/1/2023 like chat. Why Oct 2021???

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[-] Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lmao why would you only announce this in an obscure space that 99% of the userbase doesn't follow?

If you're making a major change to chat the obvious thing to do is send a message via the chat feature announcing it.

I'm only just learning of this now myself, lost some good stuff with YTers we worked with, shame.

[-] ElectroNeutrino@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago

Lmao why would you only announce this in an obscure space that 99% of the userbase doesn’t follow?

"All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now."

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 22 points 1 year ago

In the mid 2000's, Reddit was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

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[-] OGC@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

People should stop using Reddit. Migrate to Lemmy or Kbin and show spez that he’s not as powerful as he think he is

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[-] DavidRay@midwest.social 25 points 1 year ago

If your past conversations are important to you, then you should make a point of archiving them. Regardless of the platform.

Personally, I'm hoping FaceBook does the same thing to the account I can no longer remember the password to.

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[-] brad@toad.work 23 points 1 year ago

Wow, they're doing an impressively shitty job of owning Reddit.

[-] kereshnull@infosec.pub 22 points 1 year ago

Smells like desperately trying to save on storage costs.

[-] starman@programming.dev 17 points 1 year ago

It's incredibly cheap, no way they don't have money for storage. They should fire their CEO instead lol

[-] cloudless@feddit.uk 14 points 1 year ago

Text takes very little space, so I don't think it is mainly about storage costs.

I think they just want to save the data migration costs.

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[-] Boozilla@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Wow, glad I didn't have any. I really was a fairly minimal reddit user, fortunately. I do feel bad for folks who had a lot invested in those chats / friendships.

[-] Doombot1@lemmy.one 18 points 1 year ago

Agh what the fuck guys. I had a months-long convo about when I ordered a custom kitchen knife from an awesome aussie I met on the platform. Thank goodness I remember his username on instagram because everything else is gone completely! Glad I moved to Lemmy.

[-] josephsh98@lemmy.kde.social 17 points 1 year ago

I've deleted my reddit account just a few days ago, good riddance!

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[-] BeardyGrumps@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Deleted all my comment and post history from there when I was directed to Lemmy. Zero regrets. Have not looked back. Find the engagement here far better; proper discussions without the trolls. Loving it.. Also tried Mastodon and enjoying that too even though I never used twitter.

Used to spend hours each day on Reddit and was active contributor on the subreddits I subscribed to. Hoping we get some of the less popular and specialised communities here so we all got to make an effort to support the smaller ones by posting and commenting.

[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Not terribly upset at this, but it does suck that we had to look to 3rd-party applications to be able to properly search our own comment history. I have thousands of comments going back a decade and I reference a lot of stuff to save time. In my pursuit to archive some of my write-ups, it became impossible to do so with the absence of Push Shift / Camas.

Oh well fuck it; Reddit admins royally fucked me over with a bullshit suspension and won't even hear out an appeal. Bonus that they only let you use... 250 characters to explain.

[-] madjo@geddit.social 15 points 1 year ago

They're also removing the coins and awards that you got for reddit Premium. They're doing a speedrun of destruction of platform

[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago

Might be a sign of server cost issues?

[-] Captain_Patchy@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Joke's on them, everything I wanted was copied to local storage when it happened and the rest of my 14 years of reddit posts were overwritten with a single letter a and deleted.

As some other redditor said, reddit's only value is our posts. delete all your content and let spez IPO the ashes.

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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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