embecile

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.

Or Yammer 😆

r/Steam is cracking me up with their malicious compliance. Their front page right now is filled with posts about actual steam.

I thought you expressed yourself very clearly, and your English was perfect.

Even when there’s a specific prompt to send a private thank you message that gets sent to you via PM when you get the message telling you someone gilded you…it’s like nope, gotta make an edit instead!

I think he might just be burnt out and stressed right now. Being accused of making threats, being lied about publicly, and having something you worked really hard on have to shut down because the people lying about you wouldn’t be reasonable has all got to take a toll.

Often, the more specific clause trumps the more general one. My interpretation of these terms would be that (1) they have a right to copy and redistribute your content, but (2) you have a right to delete your content. If they want to copy and redistribute your deleted content, they should do that instead of putting it right back where it originally was as if you’d never deleted it. AKA I think they could post threads made by mods/admins that contain all the deleted content, where it’s coming from them (i.e. the posts and comments are made by a Reddit account). Per their license agreement, they would not be required to give attribution/moral rights to the original creators (this just means they don’t have to cite their source, basically). Putting it back under the user’s original account (whether that account is deleted or not) would make the line stating, “Please note, however, that the posts, comments, and messages you submitted prior to deleting your account will still be visible to others unless you first delete the specific content,” superfluous.

But what are people going to do, fund a class action against Reddit for restoring deleted content? Maybe talk to some attorneys practicing in that area, contact the EFF (they have attorneys), or crowdfund something. I don’t have any deleted/restored stuff, but if there’s an attorney willing to take the case, I’d still throw in to a crowdfunded effort (if necessary, I don’t know off the top of my head any of the rules about getting attorneys’ fees in class actions, and I’m not sure if this would qualify as a copyright case since it seems that the issue is more of a contract law thing).

I remember in some communities when I was posting where I hadn’t submitted a new post before (I commented much more than posted), going back and forth to the rules over and over again to make sure I didn’t miss something, only to have my post removed by auto mod or a regular mod anyway, for not following some rule that wasn’t in the list of rules.

I got used to not caring about downvotes on comments much, and to not caring about hostile replies, but not the new post “did I somehow violate a rule that wasn’t in the list?” anxiety. I will not miss that at all.

(To be clear, I’m not anti-moderation or anti-mod at all, this is limited to this specific situation, which happened more often than you’d think, sadly.)