I think your comparison isn’t completely fair - you’re comparing the insignificant large scale impact to reddit of one account being removed with the significant impact to the users looking for answers as if it was done at a large scale.
ie. One account being deleted barely hurts reddit, but it also only barely affects “the users” at large. If many people deleted their comments it would hurt the search users at large, but that would also hurt reddit. They are linked.
Think of how much money Reddit could have possibly lost as a result of people deleting their technical posts from the platform, and how much money they likely make in a day. Even if one were to assume that every user deleted their technical posts, I would have to assume that it cost Reddit less than a tenth of a percent of what they earn in a single day to lose those posts, given the scale at which the rest of Reddit operates. Realistically, that type of content is a very, very small portion of what Reddit actually monetizes across their platform.
Now think of how much of a person’s day may be spent trying to troubleshoot a technical problem when all the answers have been deleted from the internet.
Who do you think suffers more from this? Reddit with their billions of dollars, or randos on the internet spending their time trying to find deleted knowledge?
Unless the fact that no one can find technical answers there anymore means people gradually stop using reddit. It’s a less direct impact to reddit than to users, I’ll give you that. But when you’re fighting a corporate conglomerate you have only so many tools.
I think your comparison isn’t completely fair - you’re comparing the insignificant large scale impact to reddit of one account being removed with the significant impact to the users looking for answers as if it was done at a large scale.
ie. One account being deleted barely hurts reddit, but it also only barely affects “the users” at large. If many people deleted their comments it would hurt the search users at large, but that would also hurt reddit. They are linked.
Think of how much money Reddit could have possibly lost as a result of people deleting their technical posts from the platform, and how much money they likely make in a day. Even if one were to assume that every user deleted their technical posts, I would have to assume that it cost Reddit less than a tenth of a percent of what they earn in a single day to lose those posts, given the scale at which the rest of Reddit operates. Realistically, that type of content is a very, very small portion of what Reddit actually monetizes across their platform.
Now think of how much of a person’s day may be spent trying to troubleshoot a technical problem when all the answers have been deleted from the internet.
Who do you think suffers more from this? Reddit with their billions of dollars, or randos on the internet spending their time trying to find deleted knowledge?
Unless the fact that no one can find technical answers there anymore means people gradually stop using reddit. It’s a less direct impact to reddit than to users, I’ll give you that. But when you’re fighting a corporate conglomerate you have only so many tools.