L4sBotAs Reddit Crushes Protests, Its User Traffic Returns to Normal
foolonthehillI went on Reddit yesterday for the first time since the strike, whilst trying to debug a code issue. Almost every post from years old questions had the replies deleted by the users. I think the real damage will be the deletion of content and the change in tone from redditors. Most useful discourse will be gone and it will turn into a place only for arguing, memes and shit posting. Advertisers aren't going to want to pay to advertise on low quality content like that.
Punishing future searchers is what has me conflicted about wiping everything. I have an 11 year account. I have no idea how many times my troubleshooting was correct for various issues or howany times my anecdotal incidents could match for someone else.
xkcd: Wisdom of the Ancients
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wisdom_of_the_ancients.png
Rollover: "All long threads should have a globally editable post stickied to the top saying" DEAR FUTURE USERS, here's what we've learned so far"
Since I didn't figure out image embedding, here's the regular link https://xkcd.com/979/
i wont wipe my reddit account because i dont want to destroy the posts i made.
Gradually_AdjustingYou can scrape them. Bots are slowly importing posts to Lemmy communities from their legacy sources
Wiping my history was one of the most liberating things I've done. If what I posted is still needed, someone will ask again, and I have a backup.
It just feels dirty. The odds of someone coming across an old thread vs them posting + me seeing are very disproportionate. I've seen a lot of sites turn to shit and it hurts to actively contribute to that. I'm a tiny fraction of it, but part of it nonetheless. I feel like Roy Batty in his rainy monologue in Blade Runner as I reminisce among what I've seen. I've seen Facebook become the #1 social site and allow beautiful groups to flourish, only to collapse under it's own weight and greed and become an unsearchable stream of consciousness. I've seen photobucket gain titan status among image hosting, only to allow greed to permanently destroy decade-old archives among forums. I was there when forums changed formats that would break 15 years worth of inter-thread link formats, shredding the web-like connections between dormant discussions. I remember the adorable, embarrassing exchanges posted to MySpace bulletin boards as an embedded video played over an audio stream with clashing text colors before that was eclipsed by the clean, mature format of Facebook. And now, we're in another wave of Reddit degradation as so many users wipe their data in spite of the poor executive decisions. We thought the internet was forever, that anything posted was eternal. We feared sharing anything sensitive due to the viral nature of the web. But, as it turns out, it's not so permanent. Those critical viral moments spread like fire on flash paper and were forgotten just as fast. Corporate greed and poor management has proven again and again this is all temporary. All of those moments, those posts, lost in time like tears in rain.
I feel I've seen it all as well... But my outlook is more along the lines of what Steve Jobs said:
Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is Lemmy, but someday not too long from now, Lemmy will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
Or something like that...
AtaraxiaWell host those comments on your own website and submit it to Google to be indexed?
It's not realistic. I'm not THAT helpful. I just know the value I've found in ancient threads myself. I can't really sift through my own shit posts in any meaningful way and I can't bring the entire discussions with me.
TheGreatFoxThat will just get you buried under the hordes of SEO garbage. People add "reddit" to their searches because regular search is useless.
There are forums that are still being run for the stuff I need or youtube. I've managed to avoid reddit search results for two weeks and used steam or dedicated forums for every thing else from tech stuff to cooking. I never used reddit for anything but doomscrolling so I'm familiar with other resources.
The Reddit board are profiting off you though, your knowledge in those searches has value and you see zero while.spez and co get millions. Try to get it off Reddit.