One thing I’ve noticed: if you land on Google from search around 20% of comments are from now deleted accounts. Try searching “best bike reddit” and see for yourself.
I think the hypothesis that power users are leaving is showing itself to be true.
Was trying to figure out why imgur just always seems broken now (it’s because of my VPN) and as I scrolled past all the reddit results like 1/3 of the answers had been deleted. It brought a tear to this former lurkers eye.
I just tried to find one of my very popular, but deleted help comments on r/synology via Google but couldn’t find it.
What I did find heartening is that they’ve flagged the sub as NSFW so I can’t view anything unless logging in (which I can’t do because my account is gone). Also, r/plex is set to private so that’s useless too.
You may want to use something like libredirect to access rimgo, an alternative front-end for imgur; although it must be said that public instances are often limited.
I’ve taken your suggestion and although it didn’t do a whole lot for my Imgur problem, in general I like whats all going on with it. Thanks for the advice. It may not have been the outcome I wanted, yet it still feels like a small victory.
PowerDeleteSuite doesn’t get everything, particularly on old accounts. PDS uses your New, Hot, Top & Controversial lists on your profile - however reddit has been limiting the length of these lists for a few months now.
For example, if you have a link to one of your older Top comments, you might see a bunch of low karma replies underneath that PDS didn’t touch.
The only real way to get everything is to do a GDPR request and use the links in there. Shreddit can do this (in particular the github version, the website charges $15 for the feature), however even then it will panic and stop part way through. I’ve had to edit the files and split them down, and even then I haven’t yet finished. Shreddit uses the API though, so it won’t work after 1 July.
Also reddit have been restoring some comments evert couple days - you might find some that PDS removed have returned. Supposedly this is to do with how reddit’s CDN structure works, but that may also just be an excuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if reddit tries to claim ownership of everyone’s comments and restores most if not all of them, so those google searches might start working again.
I’m waiting to do it because I want to leave no trace, and any closed subs are unable to have comments changed. Also, waiting til the last minute because I’m not trying to dead mod one of my subs; I hate Reddit, buts it’s a smallish sub (30k) and I don’t want to just leave it. Only two of the five mods are active, and he’s thinking of leaving as well, so I guess we’re gonna have to mod search?? At least get one person in and then dip.
I agree. It’s just hard to do that to people I’ve been in a community with for 10+ years. Reddit won’t even notice that sub getting deaded, but the users will. The only nodding we had to do was repost bots and very rare racist stuff (really not even relevant to anything either lol)
Looks normal to me. This phenomena though is perhaps the saddest part of the whole thing. It’ll take years to build up a similar amount of excellent info.
Curious how the new results are affecting Reddit overall. I don’t know how Google works these days, I got away from figuring out that stuff for websites long ago. Would a hit to a private page and the user backing out only affect that link’s rating, or is there a bigger picture of the algorithm that would see a spike in low Reddit results and start reranking the domain itself?
Can confirm. I’ve been doing a lot of technical setup lately. Hardware, and niche software. Any issue I had or comparison of online services I looked for Reddit was the top result and of course I would click it because I’m burnt out and just want an answer. I’ll say about a fourth of the comments on the comparison/help posts are now deleted or edited to make a statement about Reddit. Everynow and again it’d be a private sub. It was super wild. Luckily google has a cached version to view the sub in those cases.
I don’t think Lemmy will ever be able to replicate that utility though. There can’t be an expectation of a very specific technical post to still being around in 5 years since it’d be contingent on the instance to still exist.
If the instance is federated then the content will live on all the instances that it’s federated with. Every single instance would have to go away for the content to disappear.
If anything, Lemmy is way more reliable than Reddit, which is currently controlled by a whiny crybaby making unpredictable decisions.
There are already plenty of support communities generating legitimately helpful information. I expect it to only get better.
One thing I’ve noticed: if you land on Google from search around 20% of comments are from now deleted accounts. Try searching “best bike reddit” and see for yourself.
I think the hypothesis that power users are leaving is showing itself to be true.
Was trying to figure out why imgur just always seems broken now (it’s because of my VPN) and as I scrolled past all the reddit results like 1/3 of the answers had been deleted. It brought a tear to this former lurkers eye.
I just tried to find one of my very popular, but deleted help comments on r/synology via Google but couldn’t find it.
What I did find heartening is that they’ve flagged the sub as NSFW so I can’t view anything unless logging in (which I can’t do because my account is gone). Also, r/plex is set to private so that’s useless too.
chefs kiss.
Respect to r/Synology and r/plex! I loved those subs
Imgur went through a purge recently of uploads not associated with accounts. They also stated they would be purging NSFW content.
You may want to use something like libredirect to access rimgo, an alternative front-end for imgur; although it must be said that public instances are often limited.
I’ve taken your suggestion and although it didn’t do a whole lot for my Imgur problem, in general I like whats all going on with it. Thanks for the advice. It may not have been the outcome I wanted, yet it still feels like a small victory.
I just used power delete suite on my 13 year old account this morning. Every comment and post is gone.
check back in few days, lot of people are reporting their deleted comments were restored
PowerDeleteSuite doesn’t get everything, particularly on old accounts. PDS uses your New, Hot, Top & Controversial lists on your profile - however reddit has been limiting the length of these lists for a few months now.
For example, if you have a link to one of your older Top comments, you might see a bunch of low karma replies underneath that PDS didn’t touch.
The only real way to get everything is to do a GDPR request and use the links in there. Shreddit can do this (in particular the github version, the website charges $15 for the feature), however even then it will panic and stop part way through. I’ve had to edit the files and split them down, and even then I haven’t yet finished. Shreddit uses the API though, so it won’t work after 1 July.
Also reddit have been restoring some comments evert couple days - you might find some that PDS removed have returned. Supposedly this is to do with how reddit’s CDN structure works, but that may also just be an excuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if reddit tries to claim ownership of everyone’s comments and restores most if not all of them, so those google searches might start working again.
I’m waiting to do it because I want to leave no trace, and any closed subs are unable to have comments changed. Also, waiting til the last minute because I’m not trying to dead mod one of my subs; I hate Reddit, buts it’s a smallish sub (30k) and I don’t want to just leave it. Only two of the five mods are active, and he’s thinking of leaving as well, so I guess we’re gonna have to mod search?? At least get one person in and then dip.
That’s the problem. Really you should do what you can to sabotage it and get the users over onto the fed. X
I agree. It’s just hard to do that to people I’ve been in a community with for 10+ years. Reddit won’t even notice that sub getting deaded, but the users will. The only nodding we had to do was repost bots and very rare racist stuff (really not even relevant to anything either lol)
Looks normal to me. This phenomena though is perhaps the saddest part of the whole thing. It’ll take years to build up a similar amount of excellent info.
Who burned the modern Library of Alexandria? u/spez, and fuck him for it.
Just open the cached copy of the page when googling for reddit results
Curious how the new results are affecting Reddit overall. I don’t know how Google works these days, I got away from figuring out that stuff for websites long ago. Would a hit to a private page and the user backing out only affect that link’s rating, or is there a bigger picture of the algorithm that would see a spike in low Reddit results and start reranking the domain itself?
I had a post saved for ultimate watch order for clone wars. But the user is no more. :(
Can confirm. I’ve been doing a lot of technical setup lately. Hardware, and niche software. Any issue I had or comparison of online services I looked for Reddit was the top result and of course I would click it because I’m burnt out and just want an answer. I’ll say about a fourth of the comments on the comparison/help posts are now deleted or edited to make a statement about Reddit. Everynow and again it’d be a private sub. It was super wild. Luckily google has a cached version to view the sub in those cases.
I don’t think Lemmy will ever be able to replicate that utility though. There can’t be an expectation of a very specific technical post to still being around in 5 years since it’d be contingent on the instance to still exist.
If the instance is federated then the content will live on all the instances that it’s federated with. Every single instance would have to go away for the content to disappear.
If anything, Lemmy is way more reliable than Reddit, which is currently controlled by a whiny crybaby making unpredictable decisions.
There are already plenty of support communities generating legitimately helpful information. I expect it to only get better.