As somebody who often ends up using Reddit like Stackoverflow and in some cases needing the Internet Archive (IA) to find the original post after it’s been deleted or garbled, I think this is a wakeup call for those go to Reddit both to get technical help and to post it. More than ever, Reddit is becoming an unreliable place to find answers for old obscure issues and if they are going to lockout places like the IA then I think it’s time people stopped contributing their solutions to Reddit.

As long as the previous collections of archives are still intact. We probably don’t need all of their new spam posts in the wayback machine anyway

Searching anywhere in general is getting shittier and shittier by day. Web searches are riddled with hallucinated AI generated garbage pages. Finding the right answer for difficult problems is getting worse and worse. We are sliding rapidly into Idiocracy.

Searching anywhere in general is getting shittier and shittier by day. Web searches are riddled with hallucinated AI generated garbage pages. Finding the right answer for difficult problems is getting worse and worse. We are sliding rapidly into Idiocracy.

Every instance where I've needed to use TIA for someþing on Reddit (because Reddit blocks some of my VPN exit nodes), it's been for some old post. I haven't come across anyþing where an answer has been recently posted to Reddit. Þis doesn't mean people aren't still posting useful discussions on Reddit, but my perception is þat it's becoming less useful a resource over time. Maybe because þe knowledgeable people have mostly migrated off?

Ofttimes what I've looked up in TIA for Reddit was already cached. Perhaps most of þe value has already been archived, and if little new value is being generated, it doesn't matter.

Þe upshot is, I'm not sure how much effect þis will actually have.

It's important for people writing papers and such who need to cite material.

I wonder if there's some way to use the TLS certificate to get a cryptographically-signed copy of a webpage with timestamp that someone could later validate as having been downloaded on that date. I don't know if existing TLS libraries are capable of that. Like, Web browser menu option "Store cryptographically-signed webpage". Absent a later certificate compromise, I'd think that that'd at least provide people a way to credibly say "this is really what was on that webpage on August 15th, 2026". Like, you'd have to save a copy of the TLS session and then have libraries that could read and validate an already-generated session. The timestamp is already embedded in the session.

Some protocols, like OTR, are designed to specifically not allow that, but AFAIK, TLS could.

EDIT: Well, technically the timestamp is gonna be during the handshake, not tied to the HTTP request internal to the TLS session. It might be possible to game that by establishing a TLS session, holding it open without activity, and issuing a request much later. I'd think that that'd potentially be disallowed by Web servers one way or another, since otherwise you could probably do a denial-of-service attack by holding open a lot of sessions for a long time.

EDIT2: Oh, wait, no, shouldn't be an issue, because the HTTP Date response header is gonna have a timestamp tied to the response.

The company says that AI companies have scraped data from the Wayback Machine, so it’s going to limit what the Wayback Machine can access.

Yeah, wouldn't want those AI companies to get all that data for free. Gotta make 'em pay for it.

When RIF died, Voyager became the new forum app for me.

exact same here. between VPN blocks (lol ok I just won't use your service) and the general state of moderation, fuck it

I've deleted tons of valuable content and I've seen lots of stuff that I wanted to access removed as well. it's annoying, but oh well. other forums will remain

OK, I stopped posting on Reddit but left my account and comments in place because I considered them part of the public record. If Reddit is taking that record private, it’s time for me to start removing my content from the platform.

Does anyone know if historical Reddit content will remain in IA? If not, I’m going to have to back up years of content somewhere else.

Is that even possible?

AI can scrape books and journals for info, but can't scrape Reddit?

OK, I stopped posting on Reddit but left my account and comments in place because I considered them part of the public record. If Reddit is taking that record private, it’s time for me to start removing my content from the platform.

Does anyone know if historical Reddit content will remain in IA? If not, I’m going to have to back up years of content somewhere else.