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I just deleted 12 years of content. Feels weird (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I nuked my Reddit accounts today. Deleted all comments and posts, then the accounts themselves. The tool I used showed each comment as it was deleted, and it was bittersweet.

I watched old gaming and movie discussions I barely remember appear and then get flagged as deleted. Communities I once participated in and then moved on as the years past flashed by. I remembered how I felt back then, and then watched them scroll on into oblivion.

Now I feel...I guess it's grief. Sadness for that part that's gone. Sadness that it'll never be there again. Like footprints on a beach wiped away by the tide. It's like it never happened. There is no trace.

And I feel anger. Mad that it came to this. Mad that I let a corporation have so much of my time and thoughts. Mad that they made it clear my life was nothing but a product to them.

It's over now. Time for a new chapter.

Anyone else have strong feelings about losing a part of the past like this?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I can't necessarily speak for the person you're responding to, but I can speak to my own experience with corporate social media. Without a doubt, reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc provided things that I value: a way to connect with people and a place to learn. But when I did it on those platforms, all of those fun chats, philosophical conversations, and learning moments that I had were owned by the social media company. I got something out of it, sure, but the corporation was skimming off the top. The recent debacles that so many social media platforms have had recently is just demonstrating that they're getting greedier and greedier. They're trying to extract more value from our relationships and interactions. This is pretty much how every corporate-owned social media platform is destined to end, because shareholders always demand growing profits. In the end, the only resource that social media companies can draw on to drive those growing profits is us.