we should delete our content so they have to create their own.
Any content that users have posted to reddit became theirs with the TOS you had to agree to first. They’ve already undeleted user submitted content deleted as part of the protests. I agree it’s time to cut them loose and move on, but you won’t be able to retroactively stop them from profiting off the content they already have.
I live where the laws are less helpful. EU and California have the helpful ones. But as a non-resident, my understanding is that the law allows full removal of personal info. Deleting posts would be selective removal and doesn’t have the “and I live in the right place” question.
There seems some confusion over its legality though, and people talking about reporting it to attorney generals etc. But that protection if private information: the information that they put on a public platform, agree to display publicly, to strangers; that’s not private information at all.
You may as well say that people on the street have no right to observe that you walked into the McDonald’s next to them, and you will report them for stalking. It’s not merely unenforceable, it makes you look foolish to even threaten that it is.
I wouldn’t put much past Hoffman or his admins at this point, but what people are suggesting as malice is extremely unlikely. The idea that Hoffman has commanded the few admin staff he’s decided to keep on staff to go through arbitrary users to restore an arbitrary number of comments is farfetched.
It’s far more likely that comments are from locked subs becoming visible again, and/or that the sheer server load from so many users making requests to delete/edit their content is leading to 503 errors, or database writing issues. Reddit code is basically one long string of spaghetti at this point.
True. We can make them pay to develop a solution to sift and present it coherently.
If they undelete threaded content, they have to undelete the context. If the go full minimax solution and undelete everything… they have caused serious problems.
If you read the TOS, no, the content does not become Reddit’s. The user retains all ownership rights, but grants Reddit a very broad license to use the content. There’s another section that allows users to delete their content (which is consistent with them retaining ownership rights, although of course this doesn’t mean Reddit loses its license to use/copy the content).
This distinction is important—what Reddit is doing here is not taking the content and copying it and reposting it from its own Reddit accounts, it’s putting it back under the user’s original account. Under the TOS, they do have a license to use, distribute, etc. the user’s content. They are not required to give credit to the original poster if they do so. But this does not mean they’re allowed to put content back under someone’s name/account/original comment, thereby attributing that content to the user, after the user has deleted it.
I don’t know all the details of their TOS, just what I’ve read from it. And I have no idea if anyone is going to sue them or anything, or even whether a suit could be successful.
But as far as whether you give your content to Reddit, you don’t, you just give them a license to use it. If you want, you can read down to #5 and see the part I’m referring to. Reddit Terms and Conditions. I think the other part about being able to delete your content is in there somewhere as well.
Any content that users have posted to reddit became theirs with the TOS you had to agree to first. They’ve already undeleted user submitted content deleted as part of the protests. I agree it’s time to cut them loose and move on, but you won’t be able to retroactively stop them from profiting off the content they already have.
A TOS doesn’t supersede actual LAW.
I live where the laws are less helpful. EU and California have the helpful ones. But as a non-resident, my understanding is that the law allows full removal of personal info. Deleting posts would be selective removal and doesn’t have the “and I live in the right place” question.
There seems some confusion over its legality though, and people talking about reporting it to attorney generals etc. But that protection if private information: the information that they put on a public platform, agree to display publicly, to strangers; that’s not private information at all.
You may as well say that people on the street have no right to observe that you walked into the McDonald’s next to them, and you will report them for stalking. It’s not merely unenforceable, it makes you look foolish to even threaten that it is.
I wouldn’t put much past Hoffman or his admins at this point, but what people are suggesting as malice is extremely unlikely. The idea that Hoffman has commanded the few admin staff he’s decided to keep on staff to go through arbitrary users to restore an arbitrary number of comments is farfetched.
It’s far more likely that comments are from locked subs becoming visible again, and/or that the sheer server load from so many users making requests to delete/edit their content is leading to 503 errors, or database writing issues. Reddit code is basically one long string of spaghetti at this point.
That doesn’t revoke our editorial rights. I still have it, I’m using it.
True. We can make them pay to develop a solution to sift and present it coherently.
If they undelete threaded content, they have to undelete the context. If the go full minimax solution and undelete everything… they have caused serious problems.
If you read the TOS, no, the content does not become Reddit’s. The user retains all ownership rights, but grants Reddit a very broad license to use the content. There’s another section that allows users to delete their content (which is consistent with them retaining ownership rights, although of course this doesn’t mean Reddit loses its license to use/copy the content).
This distinction is important—what Reddit is doing here is not taking the content and copying it and reposting it from its own Reddit accounts, it’s putting it back under the user’s original account. Under the TOS, they do have a license to use, distribute, etc. the user’s content. They are not required to give credit to the original poster if they do so. But this does not mean they’re allowed to put content back under someone’s name/account/original comment, thereby attributing that content to the user, after the user has deleted it.
I don’t know all the details of their TOS, just what I’ve read from it. And I have no idea if anyone is going to sue them or anything, or even whether a suit could be successful.
But as far as whether you give your content to Reddit, you don’t, you just give them a license to use it. If you want, you can read down to #5 and see the part I’m referring to. Reddit Terms and Conditions. I think the other part about being able to delete your content is in there somewhere as well.