It is clear that the signal to noise ratio of the WWW is getting worse. It's much harder to find good content when using a good old search engine. And if it's good it is usually hosted on Reddit or Stackexchange.
So remember, even if it's easy too Google something (well, it isn't nowadays), we want to create a fediverse of good content that helps people (I hope). So, it's always better to write a real answer if you have the time and energy. Please help boost the SNR and reverse the AI fueled information degradation loop.
(already had a feeling that someone will say this)
I won't delete my posts/comments because I want to be helpful, that's it.
But if I prefer deleting my posts/comments, I will archive it instead.
I respect what r/ArtFundamentals did, and it should be an example: After reddit's APIpocalypse, they don't support reddit and decided to close the subreddit. But the advices from the subreddit wasn't gone--in fact they actually archive it in their own website:
I wrote a script (well, modified one of my old bots) to copy and archive all of my comments before editing them. I left a note in the comments for how to find me in case they wanted the original comment. I felt like that was a fair compromise
Just search for obscure shitty pocketknife models and my dinkum pictures from here are among the top results, sometimes even #1. I therefore conclude that this is not outside the realm of possibility.
Even if you type in the exact words of the post, it will display 1 post and that is it, then switch to other sources. Probably because of all of the different server names that aren't Lemmy.
On the bright side, while the top instance hit for "Lemmy" in a Google search is "lemmy.ml", the top DDG hit is "Lemmy.World". Not only does LW have ~80% of all Lemmy users but it also shows a default post sort using All rather than Local as ML does. Thus while the chief takeaway from a normie user going to ML is "wow, these guys really hate the USA/Western world" and "bUt BoTh SiDeS eQuAl ThO", the takeaway from using DDG to find LW is a much more positive experience of "Lemmy".
So if DDG searches of Lemmy are not always better than Google, they are least sometimes are.:-)
Reddit lost nothing when you deleted your comments, they still exist on their servers and are likely being used to train LLMs now. All that was lost was other peoples ability to readt them
Sure thats correct, but I'm a little uneasy with the idea of "burn down a useful resource for people becuase fewer people helped people results in slower increases of data to Reddit"
I can kinda get the sentiment. I left during the protests too and I can see people wanting to damage Reddit, which is also completely deserved. Of course now Reddit is respecting the right to your comments even less and scrapes them for Google's LLM models.
Eh. I torched all my comments when I left (and posts, too) and I've said before and still maintain that I'm not sorry in the slightest.
If anything wants to know anything I said that was relevant to anything (and not the usual cavalcade of political bickering) they can come here and ask. I'll gladly retype any of it.
Fuck reddit. The quicker we can dispose of it and just rip that Band-Aid off, the better.
Or scrambled all of their posts after APIgate (or whatever we're calling it). Perhaps they came here, which means OP is right in saying we can be a new source of useful answers.
The way that all the copies of the content link to the original post should be some kind of SEO hack. I wonder if it's triggering specific rules in search engines that detect it and downrank it as cheating.