With all the talk about posts being lost due to people deleting comments, posts, and subs going private or generally protesting, I wondered if people have an appetite for doing some work to move key bits of reddit history over to kbin/Lemmy for posterity?
I have to admit I find all this talk of copying and backing up other people’s content to be a bit odd.
When reddit restores our content after we delete it, we get angry - it was my content to delete as I wish, how dare they reverse my decision? When our content is monetized for more than server costs+a bit of profit, we get angry - we made that content, we don’t mind you covering your costs and earning a living, but why do you get to get filthy rich from it? When our posts are quoted for pseudonews articles mining comments for opinions, we’re taken aback – excuse you, you could have at least asked if you could quote my story about my most embarrassing whathaveyou.
We get angry about these things because we feel a sense of ownership over what we post. And I don’t really see the difference here - this is another form of removing content from the control of its creators. If people want to copy their own stuff over, that’s fine! But I would never dream of removing that choice from the original poster.
Yes, reddit’s collective knowledge was valuable, and yes, there are some large-scale operations to preserve the internet in things like the wayback machine, the datahoarders backup, and other efforts… but these doesn’t mean we should also start a grassroots movement to disrespect ownership of content on top of all that’s already in place.