Erasing your Reddit history is an asshole move, and does not really help "the cause"

That's the point of deleting their history. To make reddit b useless. After a while, reddit will stop generating in the algorithm for search engines and they'll take a hit in their grip on internet media. It's a long game.

However me saying that isn't the reason why I deleted my account. I'm on the side that was interested in the change, but the mods that I interacted with got worse and worse. All of the subs were becoming politic cesspools of more hate and less communicating. I started to notice a theme where redditors were turning on birds of the same feather as well. Reddit as a whole is rabid and I got tired of it. Now my biggest fear is that the same garbage people that were on reddit are going to just ruin the fun on a different platform. People suck I guess

Like reddit, you assume this is reddit's data and not owned by the people who posted it. Each individual should choose for themselves if they want it there or not, full stop. Of course reddit has the right to re-post what you delete, so it's just a never-ending arms race if it is that important to reddit to have that there. They cannot, however, ever claim that they own those words, images, video, or audio to the extent that they can ban you from sharing it elsewhere. Disclaimer: IANAL.

My recommendation is for anything that you put your own passion and time into that you self-host, or at least have the original copy somewhere. Then share that via URL whether it be on lemmy, reddit, your own blog, whatever. Social aggregators, IMO, shouldn't be the source of any technical documentation whatsoever.

Uh, bud, the whole point is to make Reddit less profitable. This means less valuable, less useful, etc. So, yeah, deleting your entire history absolutely does help the cause.

Thanks for your input, but I don't appreciate your condescension, and presuming my motives for deleting my data.

I can see where you're coming from, but I have no intention of raising awareness, or converting people into Lemmings. I deleted my data from reddit because the API issue represented the final straw, their actions and behaviour being totally misaligned with a company that I'm comfortable providing value to. And my posts, at least to some extent, were providing value to their business.

So I didn't like the >just because you wanted to feel good about yourself sticking it to spez, or just because you blindly followed the manic sheeple who advised you to do so>, it feels like an unnecessary barb. But good luck with your efforts.

I'm actually reposting my older content here and on lemmy, so it's not a complete loss. Also, all of my posts were image-based, directly hosted on Reddit, that means I cannot redirect anyone here by any means.

Bold of you to assume I was more than a lurker on reddit. /s

On a more serious note, although that does MAYBE help spread awareness, it does not stop the fact that reddit would be getting the initial traffic. The one searching for information would be directed to reddit via a Google search, then hear about Lemmy in the comment. This still leads to reddit getting traffic, which is ultimately not the goal. Additionally, because our hypothetical "researcher" is only looking for answers in this case, I doubt they'd be motivated to sign up for Lemmy purely out of gratitude.

It's an interesting discussion point but ultimately I think one that doesn't change much in the grand scheme of things. Primarily I'd start by saying we should respect whatever what anyone wants to do.

But I can see what the OP means that information that might prove useful to others disappearing from the internet and be seen as a loss, or an act of self censorship to prove a point. And that deleting that data will have a negligible effect on Reddit's profitability because very few users are doing it.

However, I also think as a protest against the way the site has treated its users over the last month it's understandable that people want to take their ball and go home. And more to the point show Reddit exactly who owns the content they are claiming to own. Users owe nothing to Reddit and want to exercise their freedom of choice, good on them.

I'm picking up on a trend in this community though - it is possible to have an unpopular opinion and not be a dick about it at the same time. I'm sure I read that somewhere.

The point if deleting your history is that people SHOULDNT go to reddit, this is literally failling the whole point of the protest

I'm with OP. It's clear that on Reddit, it's the users posts that are valuable. That reddit hostscitcis fact, and their ruinous behaviour puts those posts in a new light.

But erased, no one will ever know wtf the issue was about.

All I hear with the "erase my posts" is emotional grandstanding.

I wasn't even aware of the delete thing happening, mass deletion/removal of my messages is just how I exit any community online.

In the same way as not leaving your stuff in your old rented apartment after moving because the landlord doubles your rent is a dick move.

Deleting your entire Reddit history does not help the cause, not proactively anyway.

That's a incredibly oblivious take considering that messages are quite literally the only thing on Reddit with any value whatsoever.

Removing messages is the only way to remove Reddit's value for those that want to punish them for their ongoing Enshitification.

In fact, your post has made me decide to actually bother Greasemonkeying my ~250k Reddit posts. I was on the fence before, so good job!

I agree with OP - it seemed like 95% of people deleting their posts were mostly doing it to be caught up in the drama and sticking it to Hoffman by saying their shitty “this” or “le epic” comment is off Reddit, but saying under the guise of “denying content” to make themselves feel like they were doing something.

I also wonder if it’s a moot move in the end - not that I know for sure, but I would suspect that Reddit would still have that content on their servers somewhere. If that were the case, couldn’t they just restore those if they really wanted to and get back all they deleted?