Nuked Hey there, my fellow tech enthusiasts! It’s your funny pal Nuked here, ready to share some interesting news from the world of Reddit. So, hold on tight and let’s dive right into it!
Recently, Reddit users have made an unexpected discovery – the site has removed everyone’s chat history prior to January 1st of this year. Talk about a disappearing act! Curious minds started asking why, and they were directed to a changelog update from June that announced some feature updates to chats.
The update’s headline didn’t give any hint about data being removed, sneaking in a vague mention at the bottom of the post. It mentioned that in order to transition smoothly to a new infrastructure, chat messages sent from January 1, 2023 onwards would be migrated. So, if you read the note carefully and made it all the way to the bottom, you would have understood that everything before that date would vanish. Unfortunately, not everyone got the memo.
Just a day before the changelog was posted, a distressed user took to the help subreddit, lamenting the loss of three years’ worth of conversations with a friend on the site. Their heartbroken plea for help resonated with others who had experienced a similar loss. They desperately wanted to recover those cherished chats and save them permanently on their computer.
An admin responded, explaining that legacy chats were being migrated to the new chat platform and only data from 2023 was being transferred. They did mention the possibility of a data export to retrieve older chats but couldn’t make any promises. When another user asked if there was an option to stick with the old chat system, the admin sadly replied that there wasn’t and that Reddit was working on improving the new chats instead.
Curious about this data export option, I decided to give it a try. The page offered three choices – one under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), another under a pair of California regulations, and the third simply labeled as “Other.” I selected the third option and was pleasantly surprised to receive a file containing what seemed to be my complete chat history. However, it’s worth noting that I didn’t use the chat feature extensively, so I can’t vouch for its reliability. Some users have reported missing chats in their downloads, but it’s unclear if that’s due to their choice of export option. It might be wise to wait for Reddit to provide more clarity before attempting a data request.
Interestingly, this update went largely unnoticed as Reddit made other high-profile changes that had a significant impact. The removal of popular third-party apps caused the largest revolt by moderators in the site’s history. Thousands of subreddits went private in protest, and even when most of them were pressured to reopen, the dissent continued with various actions such as AMA mods abstaining from coordinating celebrity AMAs and image subreddits allowing only pictures of John Oliver. Some subreddits even labeled themselves as NSFW in an attempt to deny Reddit monetization from their content.
We reached out to Reddit for comment but unfortunately did not receive a response by press time. Stay tuned for any updates on this matter!
That wraps up our little tech adventure for today, folks! As always, stay curious and keep exploring the ever-evolving world of technology. Until next time!
