this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Reddit Migration

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### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/

founded 1 year ago
 

I'm considering rewriting all of my comments, but I want to do this carefully and correctly because I'd eventually want to delete the account, so I wouldn't be able to make changes

I want to keep it short and sweet, but be informative, make very good points, and hopefully persuade any user to try out the fediverse

What did you guys change yours to? I'm thinking something along the lines of this:

This comment has been rewritten so that its' content is removed. On May 31, 2023, Reddit announced they were raising the price to make calls to their API from being free to a level that will kill every third party app on Reddit. This hurts many types of users, and the way that the CEO has handled the situation is not right at all. Reddit is another victim of pure corporate greed.

Some may not consider this important to them, but for anyone who sees this, I strongly encourage you to join the fediverse. It will be confusing at first, but it is very welcoming :) Alternative platforms:

I feel like it's too wordy (I tend to ramble). I'm trying to find compact "elegantly worded" reasons about what's going on and why it's wrong, with links of good posts, but a lot of that is on reddit. Can you guys help a bro out?

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Unpopular opinion here:

But don't. Maybe rewrite your last 6 months of comments, but as an archive Reddit still has value in over a decade of helpful answers to Googles. From a historical perspective, I think tearing that apart could be a mistake.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

I completely understand and respect your opinion, but I just disagree on a personal level - and I think there is a very valid compromise to still achieve this, by redirection. It would obviously suck a lot for people who just want to find information, so they can still get it. Just take them away from reddit

Like most of us probably, I exclusively used reddit for finding information about literally anything. Google search algorithm is straight hot garbage it's embarrassing lol

If we want other non-corporate owned thread-like platforms to be successful and for reddit to "not get away with this" I personally think this has to be done. Otherwise it's just still a free database of information that we as the users provided for free, and reddit will continue to profit off of. It's my personal stance on it, but I think it's not right, and I believe the extreme majority of people either won't or won't know how to use reddit as a search engine without giving them profits

My solution is to rewrite all of my comments, but for anything that I provided a solution for (or guide), I will redirect them to the same information, but not on reddit. For example, I wrote a full blown returning player guide (like 18 pages) for the game Vindictus, so I'm moving it to google docs. I will inform the discord, in addition to linking the google doc on the reddit OP, and possibly also reference a Lemmy post, give insightful information, etc

Most of my comments though are just discussions though, not many fixes or solutions. So that's what I'm planning on doing

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I honestly don't think more than about 30 upvotes worth of my 70,000 comment karma are anything actually useful. Most of it is acerbic takes on current events and the shitty Reddit in-jokes I post reflexively at exactly the right time.

But future Reddit visitors won't know that. I plan to edit them to sound like they were about to say something really advicey, super handy to read, then mid-sentence "...[this comment has been deleted because the user moved to kbin]."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I feel that way too. I started trying to figure out if I should archive worthwhile comments (maybe move the comment text to a page on my site and create a link to it) but then honestly there are probably a dozen comments out of 40k in karma that might be worth saving (they aren't my top ones either).

Maybe i should see if i can have ChatGPT replace them with the most-wrong version of the answer, but that also seems like work

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is exactly what I did. I saved a copy of all my content (well PDS nuked some of it and didn't save it properly, but I got what's left).

I used automated tools but I left a message on how to reach out to me at my new hangout on each one. I think it shouldn't be too hard to find the answer from there - and if it is, well hey, I'm open to answering a question or a few.

My content will be made available again, just not on reddit. reddit won't get to profit from ads using my content. Folks on reddit will have to come here (or find me elsewhere) to get that info - so i'll slowly redirect em from reddit to places like the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is exactly what I did. I saved a copy of all my content

How did you do this?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What we need is a community here of 'solved by Google threads'. If we find a solution to a problem online, say a tech fix. We can post it here, title is the Google search, body is a link to the answer, a pasted excerpt or screenshot of the answer that solved the issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

"LetMeGoogleThatForYou"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Exactly, it is not even a "free" database you are paying in ad impressions to line the pockets of the likes of spez...at least when I work for my boss and.tramsfer my IP I get some money back for putting the CEO into his next yacht.....when I give that ip to Reddit I expect some respect not a kick in the face and told to lick the shit off

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Perhaps you could compromise and just edit the comments so that your message is blaringly obvious, while retaining the content below for those in need of it? I guess it's nothing significant regardless, with the current destruction of history going on in Reddit, with the blackouts and all that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I like the idea to add a link to the true answer on the fediverse. Those searching reddit will still find the answer but hopefully this will result in fewer ad views for reddit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Google search algorithm is straight hot garbage it's embarrassing lol

Google search results are really bad, but it's worth a moment to consider how good your search results would be if as much money rode on gaming you as rides on gaming Google.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

people found information for hundreds of years before reddit and will for hundreds of years after.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit was just the de-facto source of general information for a long time. It was like the StackOverflow of general information. I think, maybe 50% of the non-programming answers I found on Google to obscure problems were on Reddit. Like there was this random issue I was having the the Valve Index headset that made its audio driver not start until I restarted the headset like 3 times, and then there was this random comment, packed full of great information, deep in a chain of comments, suggesting I change a registry value in Windows. Since then, I have never had the issue, and it's saved me tens of hours. I know Reddit can be replaced, but its loss will be felt.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Agreed completely. But this what we need to achieve. That sense of loss, so the casual browser starts looking elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't. I think this incident showed the dangers relying so much on a single failure point, and sometimes to move forward you have to do the equivalent of burning all your ships.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also a good point. Maybe archive previous reddit content in multiple places, like the internet archive as well as on the fediverse. Interesting thought..

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Using archive.org is something I've done a lot for Reddit links through out the years, since I'd come across deleted comments and usually someone would capture the page with archive.org.

I've used archive.org to take snap shots useful information of reddit myself, since I knew information could just disappear. Now some searchable database of archived pages would be great instead of needing specific links.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's a really good point. These kinds of archives aren't so easily searchable perhaps. That's why I favour manually copying content over into the fediverse. Adding the links to the fediverse (or wherever the new home is) from the old reddit commits has the benefit of making it more discoverable while hopefully keeping ad views for them down.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Remember though that in this process, you are helping reddit make money. Folks using google to find those answers on reddit will view it on reddit and feed their ads traffic.

If you can accept that, then i'm cool with it too. After all, it is your content.

But a lot of us, we still want to have this archive up. Just not on reddit itself. Some folks archive the reddit posts on the internet archive or ghost archive. So google searches will still find the answer, but will direct folks to some other side and reddit won't get the views.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Reddit redesign is all made to try and trap people who enter it without an account. It doesn't expand all the way down so leads you searching for the answer, and then has bunch of recommended posts and threads trying to get people to do one more click to not leave the site. Also pop up to install the app on mobile which has bunch of permissions to extract more data to resell. Reddit is becoming Facebook, so continuing to fuel the value of it doesn't seem like a good idea for the long term if Reddit does become a juggernaut.

After all, people laughed when Facebook's phone flopped. Now they got stuff like WhatsApp that some countries can't go without.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This makes me just want to erase the comments from reddit entirely. To avoid getting users trapped into reddit like this. Better to make them search harder and find the answers outside of reddit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ugh yes, and when they did that, it ruined one of the best things about reddit; the fact that it didn't have shit like that.

It's amazing what people will destroy for a few bucks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

OP didn’t tear that apart; Steve Huffman did.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can also rewrite it and then link the answer to lemmy/kbin thread. That's what I'm going to do once I have some free time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We should start a community here of 'internet Solves' where the Title is the Question and the answer is served up as a link of the original thread and a paste/screenshot of the answer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Maybe not screenshots since the text isn't selectable or searchable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

as an archive Reddit still has value

That's exactly why I removed it, as Spez describes my content as his content and is determined to make money off it for himself at my own expense.

People with questions can ask them again. Maybe they will even ask here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

We are of one mind!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm having a really hard time deciding but I'm leaning towards agreeing with you on leaving my history up for posterity.

I am, however, also leaning towards trying to use power delete suite to append all my comments with a message encouraging migration to the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you do that with PDS? I didn't know that it supported that.

Someone else had a similar question not too long ago - see https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/83362/Is-there-a-bulk-Reddit-edit-tool-that-DOESN-T-overwrite

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Maybe not... I haven't actually put any time into researching the things I've seen people suggest so far really... It was suggested by someone somewhere that it might be possible I think...

If it isn't possible it'd be a whole lot cooler if it was...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There are actually a couple of different versions lying around. Even if none of them support it, if you are a JS dev then I would expect that adding this kind of ability to it should be fairly quick and easy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would suggest any answers that you solved be deleted and reposted on Lemmy/kbin. We could build up our own useful database while removing our old stuff from Diggit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wrote up two handy guides for my favorite subreddit. I ended up making a magazine for that community on Kbin, so I posted my guides there and replaced the originals with direct links to those. Members are low on the magazine since migration isn’t easy, but I’ve decided to populate the magazine with guides and information I personally ended up needing during my time on that subreddit and other tips stuff I’ve picked up from YouTube videos. That way, if anyone ends up in that magazine for some reason, they might keep coming back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is the way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Before I deleted my reddit account I was mainly active in mental health subs. I spend years giving advice, sharing my experiences, guiding people into seeking help, so I decided not to delete any of my comments. There is a lot of information in my comments on how to reach out to certain places for help or how to best handle certain situations and I do not know what people might have saved for later use. I personally think helping people who suffer from the same mental health problems I do is more important than deleting all my comments.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Kinda like how the mental health subs didn't participate in the blackout - they had to stay open, and everyone understood the rationale for that. It's a special case that deserves an exception.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I moved all useful resources and information to kbin, which Im organizing neatly in a one person one suscriber magazine. Then edited all my comments to that community to lead there.
If anyone comes looking for the info, they can find it.

That said, I just edited everything from this year and every single comment I made with 20 upvotes or more. My posts I hid from my profile, and either deleted, edited, marked NSFW or a combination of those options, the rest I left there cause I don't like deleting everythin willy nilly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Could always remind people that removeddit exists

If you replace Reddit in the permalink to the comment with removeddit you can see the original....of course that will stop working for new comments after Friday 30th

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There's still a metric shit ton of support information in thousands of forums spread out over the internet. We're all just used to Google pushing Reddit results to the top so we've been conditioned to think that the Reddit answer is always the more accurate one.

The information will carry on, somehow. The internet always makes sure of it. I can still find archives of usenet posts from 1994.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Nah. Fuck that.