This is also slightly off. It was primarily to eliminate third party apps from the existing landscape. Reddit want money from users in one of two ways:

1. Use their app and pay with your data via invasive tracking and advertising.
2. Pay for a third party app that pays them for API access.

Due to the extortionate pricing, (2) was only ever hypothetical. In reality there was no sustainable model for this for any third party app, even as a non-profit.

The case around AI does exist, but it was smoke and mirrors for Reddit pulling the same nonsense that Twitter did once they realized they might get away with it, regardless of the short term damage it would do to their public image.

Any AI company who buys more then a year is dumb.

I have a replacement action set up to change a ? and a ! to ‽. I use it at least once a week!

lol dude most of us were over there for years before jumping ship and coming here

Wait

Fuck

Yeah, that's the idea. Originally I went the "random characters then delete" route but realized that if I used randomized book excerpts from the public domain, the AI, or even a human, would have a very hard time figuring out what was real and what was trash. Ultimately, even if I can't modify them all, I can modify enough to make it easier for the buyer to just filter my username out in order to keep the results clean.

I do wonder how much backup data a site like Reddit keeps. I suspect their back ups are poor as the main focus is staying live and moving forward.

I'd imagine ability to revert a few days, maybe weeks but not much more than that? Would they see the value in keeping copies of every edit and a every deleted post? Would someone building the website even bother to build that functionality.

Also for reddit so much of their content is based around weblinks, which give the discussions context and meaning. I bet there are an awful lot of dead links in reddit and their moves to host their own pictures and videos was probably too late. Big hosting sites have disappeared over time or deleted content, or locked down content from AI farming.

The more I think about it, they were lucky to get $60m/year.

I did it and it is still nuked. It did take a number of runs though.

I use a few dozen novels in a single text file and randomize which lines the script pulls. It then replaces the text three times with a random pull. What you end up with are four responses in plain English. Which is the real one? You could filter out responses edited after "the great exodus", but I have been doing this to my comments a few times per year during my twelve years on reddit.

The truth is that even if I don't get them all, I get enough that it makes it far easier for the group that bought the data to just filter my username out rather than figure out what's junk and what isn't.

And now those artists can’t sue like others have done. Really hope the products realize this and jump ship

Honestly, you just need to convince people to go through their comments and break any chains with nonsense. I bet that they are training conversational abilities (I mean what other good is the data set, it's not like redditors are experts, or when there is that the experts get upvoted at all.)