[hackinthebochs]

Because there's no apparent benefit to reddit to bring back long deleted comments from arbitrary users. When you can think of no motive for malicious behavior, it is unparsimonious to assume malicious behavior.

[tremon]

Of course there is a benefit. If users leave and remove their comments in protest, the data content available on Reddit is lowered, thereby lowering one of the IPO metrics. By un-deleting comments, the site's message count and user activity goes up, and thereby its IPO value.

[nerdponx]

It's probably more about search engine results than the appearance of user account.

[brookst]

Investors aren’t that dumb, and if they were, your theory would create liability for securities fraud.

[Eisenstein]

> Investors aren’t that dumb

Maybe not individually, but this is an IPO and the P stands for Public, and when you aggregate everyone together then intelligence is a moot concept.

[hackinthebochs]

But that's not what's happening (only those protesting having their comments restored).

[hammock]

The point stands…more comments, more content, more value, higher exit price

[Daneel_]

There’s a huge incentive for Reddit to retain the comments - that’s their knowledge base. Without that a lot of their value is gone.

[hackinthebochs]

Retain is not equivalent to undelete (making visible to everyone).

[xp84]

It is in this case. They don't "need" the data themselves, they need Googlebot to see it to get traffic, which is their lifeblood both in general and for IPO.

Have you heard the recent popular saying that Googling things barely even works anymore unless you append reddit to the query, which tends to bring up actual information instead of SEO trash?

[wongarsu]

Arguably the perception of the size of their knowledgebase is more important than the actual size, at least when talking about the upcoming IPO.

[Daneel_]

If it’s not visible to other users or paying LLMs then it’s worthless. That’s what I’m getting at.

[reaperman]

Strong incentive also exists to undelete.