That would only really be ironic if the reason for people overwriting their comments was out of protest for LLM training, but the main reason that resulted in by far the biggest wave of deletions was Reddit locking down their API. If the result of their protest is that the site is less useful for you, the user, then in fact it served its purpose, as the entire point was an attempt to boycott Reddit, ie. get people to stop using it by removing the user contributions that give the site its only value in the first place.

> If the result of their protest is that the site is less useful for you, the user, then in fact it served its purpose, as the entire point was an attempt to boycott Reddit, ie. get people to stop using it by removing the user contributions that give the site its only value in the first place.

In practice I just give them more page views because I have to view more threads before I find the answer.

Reddit's DAU numbers have only gone up since the protest.

I did phrase it as "an attempt". In the end the protest probably wasn't as effective as protestors might have hoped, and it didn't get Reddit to change course on their enshittification decisions. I do think it was good that there was an attempt at pushback, at least, when most software users just accept enshittification as normal and continue tolerating whatever abuse their masters throw at them.

> Reddit's DAU numbers have only gone up since the protest.

And so has the bot activity.

Just offering another perspective because I see those missing comments too. The author decided they didn't want to participate in public discourse anymore and their comment is gone. So be it. I don't search archives or use tools to undermine their effort. I move onto the next thing.

I read "it's maddening because ... they decided to use their autonomy and..." and I stop there. So be it.

People use their autonomy to maddening ends—how does the fact that it is of their own volition offer you any comfort? I ask genuinely. Is it something along the lines of recognizing the things you can't change?

In this case - recognition of an attempt at doing something. Downplaying that is similar to Downplaying protests for not achieving anything. At the very least it might have brought attention to the topic of contention for more people which can be a spark for change. If you have apathy and disdain for attempts at change - it might be worth evaluating what the consequences might be of that at a societal level when that apathy is the norm for harder to change things (like politics, big corp practices etc.)

Thanks for the question. It's a couple days later but:

> how does the fact that it is of their own volition offer you any comfort? I ask genuinely. Is it something along the lines of recognizing the things you can't change?

Yes, pretty much exactly this. It's like living a giant pot full of autonomous beings. Sometimes, others do unexpected or undesirable things. I can't control what they do, but I can control how I respond and what I do about it (if anything), and so I try to focus there.