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Reddit removes years of chat and message archives from users' accounts (mashable.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Reddit recently removed years of chat and message archives from users' accounts without warning as part of an infrastructure upgrade. Many Redditors were upset to discover that their chat histories from before January 2023 were no longer accessible. Reddit claims they only migrated data from 2023 forward during the transition to the new chat infrastructure. Some users were able to retrieve some of their old messages by requesting their Reddit data, though others reported that not all messages were recovered. Along with this change, Reddit has recently made other unpopular decisions like ending Reddit Gold, showing a lack of communication and consideration for users' sentimental attachment to their online data.

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[–] 30 points 3 years ago (8 children)

People used reddit chat?

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I always assumed that trolls used it for brigading since people on 3rd party apps couldn't see it.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago

    Yeah, I got into a disagreement with someone in a thread once and for a year or two, they'd just message me at random times to yell at me and accuse me of making them suicidal. I eventually blocked them and should have done it sooner. Aside from that, most other messages were just people sharing in game names for multiplayer stuff and Animal Crossing dodo codes.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I did. I was contacted several times by people who read my post about central serous chorioretinopaty, an eye pathology I have. People asked me for advice, we exchanged our experiences, they asked me how I was faring. I wrote that post in 2014. Last contact was some month ago.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I'm an occult nerd and my reddit chat was moderately active with discussions about that. It wasn't extremely popular, and it never turned into a persistent thing with more than two people, but it seemed like reddit chat was a good way to break the discussion out into a 1 on 1 where appropriate.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Yep, it was. I dunno if it would be best to open an instance about my eye disease or what, wait for Lemmy to have a chat... It's often misattributed: people believe opticians need to resolve the issue while it's stress related. So, in a way I could help.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago*

    you'd be surprised, I've heard from other reddit users that entire discord servers, wikis, & other communities would first start from reddit group chats so apparently there were a lot super involved in it. one of the big community partnered discord servers I was in told me the only reason they were on discord at first was because reddit chat made it hard to search old messages

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    [–] 22 points 3 years ago (21 children)

    They just keep fucking it up there.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (20 children)

    Don't you see a pattern? Every Blackrock/Vanguard owned businesses are driving themselves down on purpose.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago

    To my knowledge, Reddit is owned by private companies and investors. Blackrock and Vanguard have no ownership stake, or a very small and very indirect ownership stake.

    For what it’s worth, a significant percentage of every (reasonably liquid) public company on Earth is owned by Vanguard and Blackrock, because those companies manage trillions of dollars in assets (many of which are middle-class people’s retirement investments). They aren’t a conspiracy. They’re asset managers, and mostly passive managers at that.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (13 children)

    Why?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I was speculating that maybe they are going to drive the stock price into the ground and the magically "fix everything" to make it go back up, and make money on that...somehow. I'm not a stocks person so I don't know.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    This isn't how corporations work. One, they don't have that kind of foresight. All most of them care about is the next quarter, and being more profitable than they were at the same time the previous year. Two, they're not going to purposefully tank their own stock, not for any reason. If "they" did (assuming you mean the C-suite folks who would be in charge of operations), they would be replaced by shareholders pretty quickly for not fulfilling their fiduciary duty.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (9 children)

    Year 2030 is a global target for renovations in every aspects of societies and countries.

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  • [–] 33 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    Year 2030 is a global target for renovations in every aspects of societies and countries.

    According to whom? What kind of world do you live in where there's some kind of overarching "force" with "targets" like that?

    If I'm being honest, it sounds like conspiracy theory BS.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    Year 2030 is a global target for renovations in every aspects of societies and countries.

    By what method? Is that when the secret computer chip in the vaccine will turn on and kill us? Thereby removing all the people who have shown they'll do anything the government tells them to do, leaving behind all the staunch and distrustful individualists who are harder to control? Or is this some other global renovation?

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    • [–] 12 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I am no longer apathetic but livid

    Fuck u/spez.

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    • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Deletion of personal data without consent or lawful base is also a violation of the GDPR.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 years ago

    They probably still have it. I did a gdpr request then overwrote and deleted all my posts. Then deleted my 11 year account. A couple of weeks later I got the request contents, which contained every post, every comment and every DM I ever made. Reddit does not delete when it's supposed to.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Do you have a citation for this? It conflicts with what I know about GDPR.

    Mostly GDPR encourages companies to delete personal data they were holding once they no longer have a legitimate use for it. There is a rule where you can demand your data be frozen if so that misuse cam be investigated and in that case you'd be right. But in general companies can and should delete personal data.

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    • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    This sounds like it would hurt Reddit more than the users since a lot of value was in being able to search archived solutions to obscure problems.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago

    It's just the chat though, not posts comments. I've probably used chat 3 times since it exists, I couldn't care less about the history. I'm sure most don't mind. Still, Reddit sucks.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    If I understand correctly, this is only about private chats and private messages. Public comments you still have to blank/delete personally, and Reddit seems to be keeping restoring them.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    I'm finding they are stealth restoring them. As in, I've deleted all my posts/comments, but every once and a while, I'm finding someone replying to a post I've most definitely deleted. And my profile shows no posts/comments associated with my account.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    What is much more likely is that you didn't delete all your comments and posts. Reddit "listings" only go back 1000 items and if you delete an item from there older items don't pop into view. So if you deleted all comments visible from your profile and you had posted more than 1000 comments you effectively never deleted all your comments.

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    • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    All worthwhile content from reddit needs to be gathered and archived somewhere outside their reach or it will be lost.

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    • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    If I still had my Reddit accounts I’d be P I S S E D

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    They still have it. I did a gdpr request then overwrote and deleted all my posts. Then deletedy 11 year account. A couple of weeks later I got the request contents, which contained every post, every comment and every DM. Reddit dies not delete when it's supposed to.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    I don’t know if that’s across the board. I overwrote and deleted my accounts after Apollo shut down. Waited a week, checking in periodically, to see if any of my content made it back into my accounts. After a week of nothing resurfacing I felt safe deleting my accounts.

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    • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    Reddit is really going downhill. Yay Lemme

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    [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (3 children)

    man, what a shitty move. i had some chats that i wanted to keep in case i needed them in the future but forgot to back up :(

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