I’d been using Reddit for 6 years; thousands of hours. All gone, in a quick(ish) running of a script. And once it’s gone, it’s gone. Link rot is gonna be so much bigger soon. And everything that represents a mark on the platform from me will be gone.

I remember spending time on basically every interest I’ve had on there. I remember the memes, the political discussions, the anticipations of football transfers, the stunning source-gathering work on the Ukraine war, the shitposts, the communities willing to help me on the most stupid of questions. The hours spent defending random pixels on a canvas modified by other communities with friends, the awestruck silence of the Snap both in movie form and Reddit form. The support for me as a person when I needed it the most and real life couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t give to me.

And in a few minutes, that’ll all be gone. It’s already going away as I type this. Almost feels like a microcosm of my own mortality. Maybe I’m being overly sentimental, but it hurts. Anyone else feel the same?

  • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    9 years, and I’ve been a content creator that made it into the “top 1%” of my main sub. More than 200 videos (that have since been put on youtube instead) and just as many written guides, countless comments offering in-depth help etc.

    I would be lying if I said the decision was easy, but I nuked everything I could. The posts / submissions are gone, a good chunk of the comments is deleted as well. Sadly shreddit didn’t quite catch everything and now that the account is deleted I can no longer manually nuke my old comments.

    The “interesting” part is that I don’t even use third party apps - I use Firefox on my laptop. I also never used bots for moderation purposes as I haven’t been a mod - whenever I called out scammers / repost bots, I did it with a comment warning others and a report to the actual mods. The various changes u/spez wants to still implement wouldn’t even have directly affected me personally, but I found his attitude and behaviour just so incredibly sh*tty, hostile and egotistical that I decided to pull my content from his dumpster fire of a website in solidarity with the people who are directly affected.

    • digitallyfree@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      9 year creator as well, and I was legitimately sad when I pressed that delete account button. Before running the automated removal scripts I read through each one of my posts and comments and that brought back a lot of interesting memories of a different younger me. I archived what I could and got rid of the rest.

      Yes I use third party apps but it’s the whole response from /u/spez and Reddit that really made me call it quits. They’re clearly catering for the Tiktok generation and not users who genuinely want to post original content and build good communities.

    • Astrealix@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Same here. Not on the content part, just the bit about solidarity. It hurts, but all the comments are gone now.

    • Annoyed_Crabby@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, his attitude and the whole fiasco signify the direction the platform direction. Today it won’t affect you, but tomorrow he will force something unfavorable to you just so he can lure in and makes these teenager an addict.

  • sentientLasagna@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    12 years for me. I did a wipe 7 years ago so my oldest stuff is gone. I am bummed that I can’t read my oldest posts and comments, but I erased them for good reason. I was an edgy, annoying, Elon-worshiping teenager.

    I will get around to wiping the last 7 years, but I’m not ready to just yet.

      • NOPper@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago
        1. Install Reddit Enhancement Suite on your browser (if you didn’t use it for some reason)
        2. Head to your profile comments page
        3. Open your browser debug console
        4. Paste this script:
        var $domNodeToIterateOver = $('.del-button .option .yes'),
            currentTime = 0,
            timeInterval = 1500;
        
        $domNodeToIterateOver.each(function() {
        
          var _this = $(this);
          currentTime = currentTime + timeInterval;
        
          setTimeout(function() {
            _this.click();
          }, currentTime);
        });
        
        1. Hit enter. Sigh in relief as your profile cleans itself comment by comment.

        You may need to run it again after each page is cleared.

            • skillissuer@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              well, it missed some spots for me. some 500+ spots, to be precise, that i’ve later deleted manually by searching $username site:reddit.com. that was too much to do at once, so i’ve used site:reddit.com/r/$subreddit initially

      • Catch42@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Will it really? I didn’t realize. I’m guessing its because the api will no longer be free?

    • SpaceCadet2000@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I would suggest to copy paste some paragraphs from https://randomtextgenerator.com/

      I find it hilarious to see a +100 upvoted comment that when you try to read it, it’s as if you had a stroke, for example:

      Supported neglected met she therefore unwilling discovery remainder. Way sentiments two indulgence uncommonly own. Diminution to frequently sentiments he connection continuing indulgence.

      • nobodyspecial@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I jumped the gun and simply deleted my account, but this is 1337% more genius. Having the script pull from Bullshit Ipsum to edit years of linked and quoted posts would have been perfect.

  • Scissors61@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    How effective is it to delete? Didn’t reddit restore the posts / comments of deleted accounts to avoid losing content?

    • Lells@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      So I deleted all my posts and comments 4 days ago now, and they have stayed deleted. I’m thinking if you leave your account active for a while afterwards, it doesn’t trigger the “undelete” action, if it was ever a real thing. It was highly possible that peoples stuff they thought was being undeleted, was actually just the result of more private subreddits being opened back up. Content you have in a private subreddit will NOT be deleted, as it can’t be accessed.

      • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Some things were definitely restored / not deleted tho. I’ve spent a week manually deleting all of my posts and comments until reddit displayed “this user hasn’t posted anything” and “there seems to be nothing here” two days in a row, then also used shreddit which found a whooping 981 MORE comments to delete, and then I nuked my account the next day after (!) checking that it was still empty.

        … but now I can find a bunch of my older comments again. They’re no longer attributed to me (“posted by [deleted]”) but the content is still there. And that should not have been possible considering that I both manually deleted everything reddit chose to show me AND used a program that allegedly nukes everything.

  • watcher@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve been on Reddit since 2011 and feel very bittersweet about all this. Reddit has changed drastically since I first joined so I already mourned the earlier days of Reddit but this really feels like the last naio in the coffin. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have discovered Lemmy without Reddit and I see so much potential here so that is the silver lining in all of this.

  • confluence@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I guess it’s not too different than moving to a new town. The last town is still there, but it’s not the same anymore. Those memories, though… You will make new memories in the new town, but you’ll never lose the memories of the old town.

    That being said, WELCOME TO LEMMYTOWN, FRIEND! I’m new here too. Let’s make some new memories in a new context ❤️

  • Quazatron@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    15 years.

    I’m a shy person and was just now getting comfortable posting stuff.

    Oh well.

    It’s sad that a lot of genuinely useful comments are going to be lost in the purge.

  • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Actually, I’m not.

    I kinda suspected an internet cancer diagnosis pretty early, so started mentally preparing myself to say goodbye. I’ve also been doing this thing where often I write specifically for the AIs, going out of my way to be polite, clear and extra explanatory. It was kinda exhausting though, so I’m glad I can stop now.

    I’m still a fairly nice internet guy, but I can say whatever the fuck now.

  • Zardoz@lemmy.world
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    Are you actually able to delete your stuff? I’ve tried a couple days in a row to delete my posts and comments and they kept coming back. I even tried editing my posts but they just revert back to the original.

    Haven’t tried in a day or so but I assume reddit is restoring from a backup or something

    • skillissuer@lemmy.world
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      in my uneducated guess this could be some caching issue, as most of the content i’ve deleted seems to be really gone (and even unlisted by google by now), but only small section isn’t

  • BeardyGrumps@lemmy.world
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    12 years here; started erasing two weeks ago and just keep checking to see if anything has been recovered. So far it’s just been the odd comment here and there that’s resurfaced and then swiftly deleted. A lot of technical know how and solutions wiped as I used to frequent subs on Microsoft technologies. Feels for people who will experience issues whose solutions have now been wiped, but there was no way in hell that I was going to allow Reddit to make click revenue from the posts and comments that I submitted. Hopefully with time those subs will migrate to here and we start building a thriving community.

    The switch to lemmy was easy; I feel this is much more of a an accepting place. I spend more time on here than I did on Reddit as am finding interest in communities that I previously would not have visited on Reddit. (I joined several weeks ago but on a different instance and switched to lemmy.world as it had a better fit)

    • nobodyspecial@kbin.social
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      I’m also feeling more quality over quantity, as in the earlier days of Reddit. Ditto on broadening of interests, and more scrolling.

      Perhaps that’s not all a good thing, but I’m rolling with it.

  • edgarallenpwn@lemmy.world
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    I’m at about 50/50. I realized I would just scroll a lot through junk and got some time back by not doing that. I set up an RSS feed for a few news websites that has replaced reddit for current events and tech news I care about.

    However I haven’t found a good replacement for hobby boards or video games I’m currently playing. I’m on a few game discords but I hate the chat format. I would rather have threads I could read about specifics topics instead of catching up on 100 post an hour with no order. For hobbies, I found that the fediverse has me covered on the selfhosted front, but things like comic books and vinyl really hasn’t taken off that much here.

  • Corhen@lemmy.world
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    Just did the same. 12 years. received a couple bans for profanity/pinging admins from automods.

  • crazycanadianloon@lemmy.world
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    Nope, I wiped a lot of the stuff in my alt when the Aimee Challenor thing happened and tbh, I’ve been pretty disengaged since then because I found the real world to be more interesting.

    The message boards I frequented when I was 14 don’t exist anymore and thank fucking god. You don’t want this cringe stuff tied to you 20 years down the road. You’ll find that the memories of good times are enough!