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Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

kbin.social

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Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Section 230 does not talk about ownership. A freight company is generally not liable for contraband shipped without its knowledge. That does not mean that all shipments become the property of the freight company. Same thing.

A freight company that took your freight, refused to give it back, and acted like it was now theirs would appear to own it. If Reddit says "your content is yours but you cannot delete it" they're in a bit of a cake-and-eat-it-too scenario. I'm entirely sure it's legal (as other forums/HN/etc do it too) but I'm not sure it's right .

> If Reddit says "your content is yours but you cannot delete it" they're in a bit of a cake-and-eat-it-too scenario.

Yes, but the user is also in a cake-and-eat-it-to scenario: they get to own the content and have it distributed for free.

Both sides of this come from the perpetual non-exclusive license that posting to Reddit or Twitter or anywhere confers. "Ownership" is too reductive a concept for IP, which is why the section 230 thing is a non sequitur.

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked on many eventually consistent systems, up to exascale at one of the companies you mention, and that explanation just seems extremely unlikely. In a system using tombstones, those should (and generally will) go the same place as the originals so "missing shard" doesn't work. Over that time scale there should then have been multiple rounds of compaction, including those forced by disk or server replacements…

Maybe I have this wrong but looking at academic torrents, the entire pushshift archive from 2005 to 2022 is 2TB compressed. Are they really operating at a massive scale that you are describing? Pushshift is supposed to have ingested all of Reddit's comment data no? (Of course this is assuming pushsift has gotten the majority of comments)

Well, let me put it this way: if they're operating at such a small scale, they have no reason to be using any eventually consistent data store, so explanations about missing shards etc. still don't work. There are still other possibilities, as I and others have outlined, but not enough to dismiss the possibility that spez is just up to his old tricks.

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a clean fridge provides benefits, because space is limited for you. And food rots. Deleting your comments provides no benefit. Comments don't take up space of yours. And comments don't rot. There must be a reason you're deleting comments, but it's doesn't make sense that it's because of a flawed fridge analogy.

Comments that are left to rot can continue to produce unwelcome silliness long after it is no longer entertaining. There is value in removing it from the metaphorical fridge before you have to subject yourself to the foul stench that can emit out of a comment that is past its prime.

I think you need to face the fact that you derive value from other people's comments, even if they were posted more than a day ago, yet you're depriving others of the same, leaving one-sided exchanges behind you. And that's not a fair exchange.

There's no "foul stench" of comments more than a day old, that's nonsensical.

You're obviously under no legal obligation to leave your comments up, but it's simply not playing nice with others.

I'm not going to comment here any more but I sincerely hope you're able to think about this. And take in the fact that there are actual real-life people having a conversation with you. We're not "software". And you might have a more rewarding experience online if you're able to take that in. Good luck.

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#484
post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A comment’s value rarely outlasts more than 24 hours, if that. Why hoard data?

I have to disagree. Landing on a reddit thread after googling something is very common.

random reddit posts have saved my butt several times in "oh god oh god I broke the data lake" or similar situations.

Some rando post from 2 years ago, too. Deleting them after 24 hours just kinda takes away the value prop for reddit. If I want a real-ish-time convo with someone then i'll get on Discord; the value of reddit is the posts live on.

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments that are left to rot can continue to produce unwelcome silliness long after it is no longer entertaining. There is value in removing it from the metaphorical fridge before you have to subject yourself to the foul stench that can emit out of a comment that is past its prime.

I think you need to face the fact that you derive value from other people's comments, even if they were posted more than a day ago, yet you're depriving others of the same, leaving one-sided exchanges behind you. And that's not a fair exchange. There's no "foul stench" of comments more than a day old, that's nonsensical. You're obviously under no legal obligation to leave your comments up, but it's simply not playing…

Bold claim that there are people involved. We can see in the parallel thread taking place signs of an LLM-style hallucination, inventing a narrative about money where there was none before.

There very well could be people involved, but that is just an implementation detail hidden from the user. These services only present arbitrary characters of faceless and unknown origin. What lies beneath is a mystery. Which, in fairness, is a lot of the appeal. Going outside will always provide a better experience for when you want to involve other people! We come here because we want to spend some time away from other people to collect our own thoughts just for ourselves.

The foul stench is the continued silliness that persists after the entertainment is over. The design of HN is not so bad for this, but Reddit will put it right in your face if it has more to output. Once the entertainment is over, it's too much. I don't care. Silly is only entertaining for a short period of time and needs to end when that time has elapsed.

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#486
post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Steve (the CEO) has, now or in the past: * edited the content of user comments without acknowledgment, * threatened to or has removed or installed moderators into communities to circumvent the blackout * threatened to "un-private" communities Why are you so sure that he wouldn't authorize un-deletion of comments?

What business value would it provide?

Reddit has value no just through it's "new/live" content. Plenty of people search for "$topic Reddit" and fond some old threads with useful information. If the content is deleted, Reddit usefulness goes way down.

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which they will promptly ignore or stonewall with endless back & forth until you give up.

You talk to the governing body / regulator so that they talk to reddit and deal with the ignoring and stonewalling.

My argument is that the regulator itself is useless and will stonewall you.

Not to mention, even in a hypothetical world where the regulator actually did their job, Reddit can still ignore them as they have no EU-based presence to be fined.

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huffman (spez) has his reasons for the reddit changes, but they do seem a bit short-sighted. But there comes a point where these online services have to make money. It's as simple as that. So is he waging war on users, or making a business decision? Also, Musk is waging war against advertisers. Running a site that is controlled by advertisers is the epitome of extreme centralization, since the site's income can be ha…

> But there comes a point where these online services have to make money. Reddit is 18 old, and you're telling me that they are just thinking about making money now ? How come 4chan and Wikipedia are both profitable, but not Reddit? And how is it a problem with their users and not their management?

VC money. VC money gambles on big wins. They'd rather have a huge blow-out than a small success. So you take VC money, they want you to grow. They care about that more than making a profit. For a long time. Then, when you are huge, then they want money.

This sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. But Google and Facebook started out without a profitability plan.

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is just a convenient way to keep track of debt. Stop making it into some kind of proxy for all human need and utility.

I said nothing of money? Although, of course, what you say about money is true. In fact, I can see from my not deleted HN history that I wrote that money is just an IOU only three days ago. I guess there is some value in being able to look back on my work! But is it value enough? Human nature is to be transactional. If I offer you my time to write a comment for you, I am going to expect something in return. That in r…

Do you find this attitude makes your life more pleasant, or does it make it that when people at a social event find out you are on the way to join them, they sigh silently and look at the ground and make a wish that you would have gotten over your reductive, sophomoric, and joyless 'everything is a transaction' philosophy because it makes you tedious?

Re: Reddit appears to be restoring edited/deleted comments

#490
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with throw away accounts is that there is technology to link the accounts by comparing your writing style to other accounts. Hacker news had a good demonstration of that awhile back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016

That would apply equally to using different usernames on each site, so not really relevant to the point being made here.

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