There's no technical reason they couldn't migrate this data into a new system or otherwise store it for legacy users. This was a direct buisness decision from leadership plain and simple. Hard to watch as people lose such a big part of their lives. Really highlight a greater need for more open forms of social media that can't be destroyed in a whim
There are 3 reasons I can see.
1:
It's a huge change, and they did a dual-implementation however long ago - where they store it in the active legacy system, and also store it in the new inactive system ready for when the switch is flipped.
Do a year of this, changeover flawlessly, and suck up the outrage over lost data.
2:
It's a maybe not such a large change, but the data processing for it is expensive. So, however long is an acceptable cost, and its balanced against user outrage
3:
There was a TOS change. So data before that date can't be sold/monetised, whereas after that date has value.
So, drop the data that costs money, keep the data that can be monetised.
Whatever, it's bullshit.
Glad I left. And glad Lemmy is cool
Most likely a request now goes to the "new infrastructure", where only new messages are replicated. Old data is still stored on the old infrastructure, which some old frontends are still using. After the migration is over, the old chat might no longer be accessible.
So there's hope for remedy to their tech incompetence, which is also their tech incompetence…
It appears some users may be able to download all their messages, including ones prior to 2023, by making a data request at https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request(opens in a new tab) while logged into their Reddit account. [...]
In addition, using the old version of Reddit which is still accessible at https://old.reddit.com(opens in a new tab), users may still be able to access inbox messages prior to 2023.
However, some Redditors have reported that even the data request option did not retrieve their old chats or some messages were missing.
To long, didn't reddit.
I noticed this shortly before exiting Reddit. Thought it was just a glitch that a bunch of my chats were missing. Most of them were “thanks for the gold/award!” type messages, so it kind of goes right along with the stupid decision that to kill coins/awards.
I forgot there was chat
Jokes on them, I deleted my account
Oh no. So much conservative harassment and OF spam, gone!
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
