Of course not. But that’s why deleting your account is a double-edged blade. Yeah, you can fuck over Reddit a little bit by doing this (realistically they probably made less than $1 from any one user’s tech solution posts). But the people who really get fucked over by this are users outside of Reddit, looking for answers to their problems.
I’m not saying either option is right or wrong. But there’s absolutely a cost incurred in deleting content like that, and the one who ends up paying most of it is not the one who was targeted to begin with.
I think your comparison isn’t completely fair - you’re comparing the insignificant large scale impact to reddit of one account being removed with the significant impact to the users looking for answers as if it was done at a large scale.
ie. One account being deleted barely hurts reddit, but it also only barely affects “the users” at large. If many people deleted their comments it would hurt the search users at large, but that would also hurt reddit. They are linked.
Think of how much money Reddit could have possibly lost as a result of people deleting their technical posts from the platform, and how much money they likely make in a day. Even if one were to assume that every user deleted their technical posts, I would have to assume that it cost Reddit less than a tenth of a percent of what they earn in a single day to lose those posts, given the scale at which the rest of Reddit operates. Realistically, that type of content is a very, very small portion of what Reddit actually monetizes across their platform.
Now think of how much of a person’s day may be spent trying to troubleshoot a technical problem when all the answers have been deleted from the internet.
Who do you think suffers more from this? Reddit with their billions of dollars, or randos on the internet spending their time trying to find deleted knowledge?
Unless the fact that no one can find technical answers there anymore means people gradually stop using reddit. It’s a less direct impact to reddit than to users, I’ll give you that. But when you’re fighting a corporate conglomerate you have only so many tools.
It’s impossible to quantify such a claim right now. Lemmy instances are still largely poorly-ranked in search engine rankings. For instance, I can search for a comment that I’ve written on Lemmy from months ago, word for word in quotes, and Google can’t actually find it anywhere. It’s a string of text that has no other results, either.
This is such a “shoot the messenger” type argument.
It’s not the users who deleted their accounts who screwed over other users. It’s Reddit taking a toxic and anti-user stance that pushed many users away.
Reddit is the one that’s at fault. It’s exactly like saying “you screwed over the kids by getting divorced from your abusive mate”.
I never said they were obligated to, but it would be nice if people had an alternative to give the traffic to and also it wouldn’t be leaving anyone who needs the info in the lurch, if they were willing to put that info elsewhere.
Are they obligated to?
Of course not. But that’s why deleting your account is a double-edged blade. Yeah, you can fuck over Reddit a little bit by doing this (realistically they probably made less than $1 from any one user’s tech solution posts). But the people who really get fucked over by this are users outside of Reddit, looking for answers to their problems.
I’m not saying either option is right or wrong. But there’s absolutely a cost incurred in deleting content like that, and the one who ends up paying most of it is not the one who was targeted to begin with.
I think your comparison isn’t completely fair - you’re comparing the insignificant large scale impact to reddit of one account being removed with the significant impact to the users looking for answers as if it was done at a large scale.
ie. One account being deleted barely hurts reddit, but it also only barely affects “the users” at large. If many people deleted their comments it would hurt the search users at large, but that would also hurt reddit. They are linked.
Think of how much money Reddit could have possibly lost as a result of people deleting their technical posts from the platform, and how much money they likely make in a day. Even if one were to assume that every user deleted their technical posts, I would have to assume that it cost Reddit less than a tenth of a percent of what they earn in a single day to lose those posts, given the scale at which the rest of Reddit operates. Realistically, that type of content is a very, very small portion of what Reddit actually monetizes across their platform.
Now think of how much of a person’s day may be spent trying to troubleshoot a technical problem when all the answers have been deleted from the internet.
Who do you think suffers more from this? Reddit with their billions of dollars, or randos on the internet spending their time trying to find deleted knowledge?
Unless the fact that no one can find technical answers there anymore means people gradually stop using reddit. It’s a less direct impact to reddit than to users, I’ll give you that. But when you’re fighting a corporate conglomerate you have only so many tools.
Over time the problem will fix itself as search engines begin showing results from Lemmy instances. Most of the useful people are here now.
It’s impossible to quantify such a claim right now. Lemmy instances are still largely poorly-ranked in search engine rankings. For instance, I can search for a comment that I’ve written on Lemmy from months ago, word for word in quotes, and Google can’t actually find it anywhere. It’s a string of text that has no other results, either.
Note this is more than account deletion: this is per-comment deletion. Accounts when deleted do not expunge comments.
This is such a “shoot the messenger” type argument.
It’s not the users who deleted their accounts who screwed over other users. It’s Reddit taking a toxic and anti-user stance that pushed many users away.
Reddit is the one that’s at fault. It’s exactly like saying “you screwed over the kids by getting divorced from your abusive mate”.
I never said they were obligated to, but it would be nice if people had an alternative to give the traffic to and also it wouldn’t be leaving anyone who needs the info in the lurch, if they were willing to put that info elsewhere.
Depends what it was. If it’s programming someone possibly already provided an answer on stack overflow