Well, no, if the information isn't there, it won't show in searches.

If it doesn't show in searches, nobody clicks into reddit for that info.

If nobody clicks in, no ads are served.

Removing our information directly cuts their ability to profit from anyone that does so. Will they still make profit from other users? Absolutely.

But, huffpig himself declared that our words and expertise were his to make profit from. He didn't even mince words, he said our collective writing was reddit's "corpus of data", that the information we supplied, and the tracking/data gathering reddit does is only valuable in terms of what it gains him via reddit.

Again, anyone is free to make their own choice about whether to delete comments and posts or not. But it is ours to delete. You do not own my writing, nor are you entitled to access it if I choose to remove it. The same is true of your writing there (or here). If you choose to delete it, tough shit for me, I'll have to find a dedicated forum elsewhere.

To say otherwise, you lead down a road where people start thinking that others are required to provide expertise ad infinitum, and that just isn't true. Copyrights alone prevent that, and anything on reddit would still be held as the writer's property. While I am piracy friendly even with my actual writing that is also sold, that is my Copyright, not anyone else's. If anyone wants to profit from it, it is my right to seek redress.

Big or small, helpful or useless, the ability to control our writings is a fairly clear legal right.