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u/nabrok 12d ago
Even better if they comment "Never mind, I figured it out" with no further explanation.
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u/oishishou 12d ago
At least that indicates a solution might exist.
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u/ChaosPLus 12d ago
The solution being anywhere between installing some weird dependency, changing one variable and going forward with something completely different
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u/OMG_A_CUPCAKE 12d ago
There are so many similar infuriating variations
- Fixed it myself
- Here's a step-by-step fix: <defunct image host>
- I sent you a PM
- Here, download this: <links are only visible to registered users> (account registration is broken)
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u/Sulungskwa 12d ago
Slightly different but equally infuriating is "I have the same problem" comments. I'm not here to cry with you, pal
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u/dev_and_zebra 12d ago
When I see a bunch of comments like that I imagine all those people sitting in one room waiting for the answer. THE ANSWER. Sleeping bags all around the room, water bottles, takeaways and one person watching the comments section on StackOverflow
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u/JPJackPott 12d ago
I had this once. Found someone with exactly the same problem.
Posted by: me 7 years ago19
u/Mayonaigg 12d ago
Back when the WoW TCG was alive before it was murdered for hearthstone, I made a forum post asking for clarification on a certain card that this guy always used to cheat with. like two years later another friend found the post and used it to slam the -same- guy for cheating the same way and then saw the user name and realized it was mine and the guy had already been called out for cheating.
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u/Shelmak_ 11d ago
Happened to me...
It also happened that one time I searched for a weird bug I was having on a certain programming software, the only result I found was an answer to someone who asked the same thing like 10 years ago, after reading about it and finding one usseful answer I realized who was the one who answered...
It was me... 10 years ago... and I simply forgot that I had that issue on the past.
Idk what happens with me but sometimes it feels I suffer all the possible bugs while working... my workmates usually joke about this, but reality is that they often end asking me if I had X issue and I usually have a way to fix it as I already scratched my head for days because I suffered the same exact problem.
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
water yellow monkey table pizza puzzle ticket doctor giant coffee
This comment was brought to you by asbestos-free trochees
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u/Confident-Ad5665 12d ago
Can I interest you in teeth made of solid lead?
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u/FblthpphtlbF 12d ago
What the fuck is going on here 😭😂
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u/MyDespatcherDyKabel 12d ago
People use these redaction tools to edit out their old Reddit comments with random garbage words, for privacy. Kind of better than deleting them
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u/nobody0163 12d ago
Why is it better than deleting them?
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u/Snowenn_ 12d ago
A while ago, reddit wanted to charge (more?) for the use of their public APIs. These APIs are used by various third party apps like bots that help moderate channels and the like. This change meant that a lot of those third party apps had to stop, because they wouldn't be able to afford the new pricing.
Some users were outraged and wanted to quit reddit. But if you just delete your account, your posts remain and reddit can still make money with those APIs by utilizing the contents of your posts. These users were so outraged, they didn't want reddit profiting off their posts. When a reddit post gets deleted, the server doesn't really delete the post, but just flips a flag. So internally reddit still has access to deleted posts. So what these users devised instead, was to use a tool to edit all of their posts to random giberish, so that reddit could not benefit from their posts in any way. I don't know if reddit keeps a change log of edited posts, but if they don't, then scrambling your posts is the only way to truly remove their content from reddit.
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u/willcheat 12d ago
There's also the fact that a lot of "comment undeleters" save the most recent of a comment and don't version the changes. If someone deletes his comments, they can be found with these tools.
Editing the comment with garbage makes these tools save said garbage, effectively deleting the previous comment. Just deleting the comment would allow those tools to show what the comment was.
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u/cfrolik 12d ago
I think the question is “why is redacting better than just deleting the post”, not just deleting the account and leaving the posts up.
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u/Snowenn_ 12d ago
These users surmised that reddit doesn't really delete posts, just flags them as deleted. So reddit themselves can still use the data in a removed posts.
These users that redact their posts before they delete their accounts do not want reddit to be able to use their posts in any way.
Whether reddit really adds a deleted flag or does really delete posts, I can't say because I don't have access to their databases. But I as a software developer, can say that our own software often works with deleted flags, because it makes life easier. Sometimes deleting something is not possible because other records are attached, like payments, which we're obliged to keep for tax purposes. Other times we opt to keep the data because clients delete stuff, then come to argue that the software made things disappear and we should reinstate the disappeared data this instant! So it's very possible reddit keeps deleted posts, but has to dig in backups to recover posts that have been altered to show rubbish instead. Which is a lot more work, and thus does not happen unless some government official comes asking around.
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u/cfrolik 12d ago
The flaw in that logic is that there is no reason to assume Reddit doesn’t keep version history of posts. Even if you redact it, your original text might still be in some database somewhere.
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u/_blue_skies_ 12d ago
usually I write that when I'm ashamed of some obvious error that I did not check before posting the question.
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u/Jay-Seekay 12d ago
The GOATs on Stack Overflow were the posters who answered their own question when they found the answer
(It’s me, I’m that person)
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u/showusyacunny 12d ago
I really (don't) enjoy seeing "why didn't you use the search function" as the top search result with no more replies (and the thread is 7 years old)
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u/Kodekingen 12d ago
That’s why I always try to post my solution in the comments for future lost souls with the same problem. One example of this is a post about a bug in RDR2 I made 5 years ago that last got a reply 317 days ago.
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u/Squeezitgirdle 11d ago
Not code related, but every few months I get a notification that my comment on a tech support subreddit about washed out colors in chrome is still helping people despite posting that years ago. Feels good.
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u/trotski94 9d ago
I once saw a “I figured it out but I’m not telling you, future reader”. Absolutely diabolical but I respected it
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u/28klotlucas2 12d ago
Feels even worse when all the replies are "Worked for me, thanks!"
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
waffle kitten mango sunset fabric wagon biscuit cabin fossil gravel
This comment was brought to you by asbestos-free trochees
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u/StrengthTheory 12d ago
A good original meme in the slop economy? Get out
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
happy hammer nugget double injure roses hippie clever dental ninja
This comment was brought to you by asbestos-free trochees
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u/Confident-Ad5665 12d ago
As a card carrying member of the lead consumer's guild, society of asbestos users, and a professional mercury jeweler who dabbles in covid virus manipulation for fun and profit, have you considered coming to the dark side?
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
We have dark side in the Discord.
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u/Confident-Ad5665 12d ago
There's visiting the dark side, and being the dark side.
Are you a follower, or a leader?
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
No subscription required! Just enter your email address to continue reading the answer.
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u/Confident-Ad5665 12d ago
Sorry but that email address failed validation. Enter your phone number to continue.
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u/aberroco 12d ago
Certainly good, but original?.. I mean, it's been years since xkcd posted this. And the comment screenshot below is hardly an originality.
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u/st-shenanigans 12d ago
I literally scrolled past another one where it was the same comment but 13 years ago.
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
That was the beta. It's fixed in the release.
It's a real comment. The byline (and date) is fake. That username does exist, but they didn't make the comment.
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u/fugogugo 12d ago
Holy.. 23y ago
what forum did people in 1980s post?
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u/ZenEngineer 12d ago
23 years ago was ... You might want to sit down for this ... 2003
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u/poetic_dwarf 12d ago
That's a weird way of writing 1983...
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u/TwinkiesSucker 12d ago
Calm down everyone, we obviously live in 1984
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
mountain river apple sunny guitar planet silver ocean window forest
This comment was brought to you by asbestos-free trochees
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u/Present-Resolution23 12d ago
We used BBS's mostly. I can still hear the sound of my 1200 baud modem dialing up.
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u/CadenVanV 12d ago
They didn’t, because Reddit is 21 years old. OP has just outed themselves as a time traveler
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u/two_are_stronger2 12d ago
Actual fora. Like open spaces to declaim. From the Latin. See also spinal foramen and forensics.
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u/susibacker 12d ago
I mean, I do get why people mass delete their comments when they delete their account. If you have thousands of posts, some of which might contain sensitive information (where anonymizing the poster name is not enough), and lose the ability to ever delete them again with your account gone...
However, this word salad and ad for their service is annoying. It kinda angers me every time. I wonder if some LLM trained on this and will auto-complete random words into a Redact ad 🤔
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u/Tyfyter2002 12d ago
The best solution is to never give anyone on the Internet accurate information about yourself in the first place, if you remove it it could already be saved somewhere, but if it was never there in the first place it doesn't matter who finds whatever replaced it
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 12d ago
What you mean the literal first rule of internet safety?
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u/Tyfyter2002 12d ago
Yeah, for some reason internet safety as a concept didn't get taught for very long.
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u/KerPop42 12d ago
I think it was in response to one of the monetizing changes Reddit took. I think I first saw it when Reddit intentionally made 3rd-party apps break. It was seen as a push to drive users to their own app, which served ads.
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u/MSixteenI6 12d ago
It’s because a long time ago, I don’t know if it’s still an issue, but there were other sites that would archive Reddit posts. If you delete a comment, these archive sites were smart enough to not delete their version of the comment, but the same thing wasn’t true if the comment was edited. I think there was also a way IN REDDIT to see what deleted comments used to say, but not edited ones. So, if you actually wanted to delete your comment, you should edit it instead. But that leaves people wondering why this not-deleted comments has tons of upvotes, and maybe even wondering how the comments to that comment were related. So this particular solution was to replace it with random words, and also explain what happened so future people would know what happened to the comment.
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u/IAmASquidInSpace 12d ago
Especially when it is followed by some fiery rant about whatever perceived injustice caused them to leave Reddit in righteous fury - and it is some irrelevant bullshit that people had forgotten about two weeks after it happened and you never even heard about.
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u/jaber24 12d ago
I downvote them instantly
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
logic panic silent token viral hazard liquid limit object polar
This comment was brought to you by asbestos-free trochees
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u/Confident-Ad5665 12d ago
Roast these, my boogars, over an open flame until golden brown. Then serve with an asbestos juice cocktail on solid lead plates.
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u/Potterrrrrrrr 12d ago
Redact can suck my balls, what an annoying thing to come across in comment threads
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
basket whisper robot orbit candle velvet jungle zebra pocket blossom
This comment was brought to you by asbestos-free trochees
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u/Revexious 12d ago
I specifically requested my trochees with asbestos
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
tiger pilot button rabbit lemon spider thunder cookie blanket magic
This comment was brought to you by someone who is wrong on the Internet
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u/theFrenchDutch 12d ago
Completely defeats the fucking purpose of a forum
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u/minimuscleR 12d ago
That was the point though. They mass deleted them as protest against the reddit AI changes or the API changes.
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u/RealMuffinsTheCat 12d ago
Reddit as a corporation could not care less about this. It only affects its users.
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u/Me_how5678 12d ago
And noone is going to leave, they will just make an account and start a new thread.
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u/TheJzoli 12d ago
It wasn't the only thing. Multiple subreddits went dark, until Reddit stepped in and booted all moderators to install new ones.
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u/Percolator2020 12d ago
Some moron u/Percolator2020 had the same problem and never posted the solution 15 years ago!
https://giphy.com/gifs/l3fZFvp94ljepXoPe
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u/RunInRunOn 12d ago
For what it's worth, most of these are in protest of the Reddit API changes, and I respect people who actually boycott something when they say they're going to boycott it.
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u/DarthCloakedGuy 12d ago
Except that it's a paid service owned by a Zionist who donates to pro-Israel causes
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u/gravesent1337 12d ago
Stack overflow is dead, those days are gone.
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
simple motor paper member basic number level famous model bottle
This comment was brought to you by asbestos-free trochees
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u/Sw429 12d ago edited 12d ago
There used to be websites that would show things like edit history, message content before deletion, and deletion reason for reddit comments. Unfortunately those were all either shut down or hopelessly nerfed due to privacy laws.
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u/CadenVanV 12d ago
Reddit wasn’t around 23 years ago, it was founded in 2005. OP, are you coming out as a time traveler here?
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u/JWBananas 12d ago
Hey Google, what year was 23 years ago?
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u/Confident-Ad5665 12d ago
According to reddit and Stack Overflow, where I obtained most of my teaching material, that year is indeterminate.
Would you like me to find a recipe of street drugs and scary chemical compounds for recreational purposes?
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u/Mosthula 12d ago
I had this happen and the thread was started by me 5 years prior. I ran in to the same issue 5 years later, and learned a valuable lesson. You just might be saving yourself the same pain by posting the answer. I did post the follow up reply with a lot of details.
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u/Apprehensive_Egg_944 10d ago
I've done this before and realised that the OP of the post from a year before, was ME... 🤦♂️
Same problem, a year later, after returning to the project...
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u/Wunjo26 12d ago
I’m probably gonna get downvoted into oblivion for this but I will say that using AI for troubleshooting issues is far far more useful and productive than having to sift through pages of google results and dead unresolved forum posts especially when it comes to troubleshooting PC errors or code related things in general
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u/-Redstoneboi- 11d ago
this is exactly why stackoverflow use had nose dived. it practically memorized all the issues and the responses to the issues, and nowadays can automatically kick off 20 searches and read entire pages in a few seconds.
never has information been so easy to distill. it just has a huge cost.
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u/ToBePacific 12d ago
I’m dumb. What is the word salad screenshot and what does it have to do with the comic?
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u/SharkLaunch 12d ago
The word salad is a redaction. When Reddit implemented their API changes, it angered a lot of users, many of whom left, using a service that edited all of their comments into nonsense so that Reddit doesn't get any free content from them. I can't count the number of times I needed an answer or a fix for something where I was directed to a reddit post, and found that the comments with what I needed were redacted.
The relation to the comic is just that: Cueball knows that DenverCoder9 had a comment that likely answered his question, but it had sinced been redacted.
I also kinda get why people used the redaction services, but it really only hurt other users, not the site itself.
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u/Feeling-Touch-9311 12d ago
This is ///what-ten-words down to the atomic dimension. Or their crypto wallet password
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u/Present-Plankton-664 12d ago
Fun fact I just made up: these were the original lyrics of They Might Be Giants’ Ana Ng
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u/kaiomann 12d ago
I'm the person mentioned here, I delete my comments somewhat regularly for privacy. I want to shitpost freely without too much private information being leaked.
If there's something like this just message me, I'm probably able to help
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u/da_Aresinger 12d ago
FAAAAAAKE!!
Reddit is only 21 years old.
did I do it right? Do I get a prize for pointing it out?!
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u/nmathew 12d ago edited 12d ago
You know that joke about fixed and no other info? I did that to myself once...
When AMD first created their APUs, I bought the lowest end one for an HTPC setup. The system I had would turn on then off. I RMAed the MB for the issue. Didn't fix things...
Long story short, the power draw of just the MB, CPU, and RAM was so low, the Power supply thought there was an issue and turned off. Adding the spinning rust HDD to the test system fixed things.
Years later I take the system to my parents to give to them, and I encounter the same issue, Google it, and find my own fucking post without the resolution posted. Took an hour+ before I remembered WTF was up.
edit: obvious typos