I nuked my Reddit accounts today. Deleted all comments and posts, then the accounts themselves. The tool I used showed each comment as it was deleted, and it was bittersweet.
I watched old gaming and movie discussions I barely remember appear and then get flagged as deleted. Communities I once participated in and then moved on as the years past flashed by. I remembered how I felt back then, and then watched them scroll on into oblivion.
Now I feel…I guess it’s grief. Sadness for that part that’s gone. Sadness that it’ll never be there again. Like footprints on a beach wiped away by the tide. It’s like it never happened. There is no trace.
And I feel anger. Mad that it came to this. Mad that I let a corporation have so much of my time and thoughts. Mad that they made it clear my life was nothing but a product to them.
It’s over now. Time for a new chapter.
Anyone else have strong feelings about losing a part of the past like this?
Rando internet hug
I still have my account left because I’m an incurable optimist. Or rather, realist. Spaz can’t keep getting away with this shit forever you know? At some point, the board is going to look at his childish antics disguised as corporate governance and say “Hey, this guy is a big fat phony!” and then… his goose is going to be cooked.
Still, deleting tons of shit is rough. I did the same for my Digg account which had a few years on it.
But … see it like this, you used your voice and you said “fuck you!” and left. That counts for something.
The fediverse and lemmingverse reminds me of how Reddit used to be. Sure, fewer posts, but much more salience. More actual content instead of repost bots. Less Onlyfans and more actual horny people posting stuff. More nerds and less HURR DURR retards.
I know I jumped off the cliff to be with you fellow Lemmings, but damn if it isn’t fun!
I think you are an optimist. Something that has always rubbed me the wrong way is how aggressively unempathetic Reddit is. They prioritize their own convenience and will ridicule you for caring.
This has been no different. I just saw the NFL sub came back online and people are near-unanimously livid at the mods and endlessly mocking them. Apparently they even made a secondary sub to go to. And it’s the off-season.
Well, we’ll see. One of Bloombergs columnists just fired a warning shot across their bow by pointing out that they’re rapidly losing their core audience and that a migration is practically guaranteed at this point because of their actions. Also bear in mind that Reddit is using astroturfers to aggressively push their “fuck the mods” narrative. Most people aren’t buying it since now everybody is starting to see just how uniform their talking points are. And mind you, just as with the whole Wizards Of The Coast debacle, when financial institutions and newspapers start telling you that you’re screwing up your stuff, that’s real bad because investors tend to listen to those before making a decision.
What Reddit’s management could do would be to simply scapegoat ol Spaz and feed him to the wolves by firing him and then saying “We listened to you, here’s [reasonable pricing]” Then they could not only restore their brand, but keep moderators on staff AND cash in on people doing volunteer work in creating/moderating content while paying for it.
However, it seems that often, business intelligence people seem to lack basic insight into human motivation and empathy. And that’s something that’s been literally confirmed in science.