> A lot of subreddits are bastions of information for sometimes very niche topics.
While I don't doubt that's the case, it's incredibly difficult to get at old content due to Reddit's horrible search experience. I never look up anything old there.
Reddit's search has always been terrible.
site:reddit.com or site:reddit.com/r/nichesubreddit <query> is how I actually find things. Lately I actually have begun to cache important things locally, but I wouldn't assume anyone else is doing that for the particular topics or niche subsection of a topic that I'm looking up.
I genuinely cannot tell if this is satire.
A lot of subreddits are bastions of information for sometimes very niche topics. I frequently run into reddit posts that are 6+ months old but still relevant to what I'm seeking knowledge about. Outside of the programming sphere, posts from years ago generally still hold value.
Saving posts would imply that I knew what Future Me wants to look up, or praying that someone was interested and cached it. Writeups/insightful discussion would be completely wasted, and I would have to find -another- website for potential caches of things relevant to what I'm looking for.
It would be like IRC where people delve into the same topics and arguments ad infinitum.
If I wanted an ephemeral social network (like snapchat) I would use an ephemeral social network, like snapchat.