Users should own their comments and should be able to delete them as they see fit. Sites like Reddit should not be used as a permanent or reliable source of information.
Useful to others because they search reddit is fine (even though I disagree with Reddit's app policy). Useful to OpenAI to train ChatGPT and dispense as wisdom people pay for?
I can totally respect someone trimming all their online footprint to avoid that.
I'm making a tangential statement only somewhat related to the comment above it. Personally I don't like that sites like Reddit claim ownership of and make profit from user generated content. I think people should delete their comments and move to a more open and free platform.
Should be mentioned the rights are retained by the user. Reddit only gets license to reproduce that content and allow others to do the same. Although also being perpetual, irrevocable, it's similar to ownership cannot say they're the same thing.
A lofty ideal, but unpragmatic if you actually care about privacy. You have no control over how information disseminates once you publish it. You must assume it'll remain on the Internet forever. Even if you assume the existence of first-party deletion tools, third parties like Internet Archive or (in Reddit's case) PushShift can choose to preserve it.
If you want to retain your online anonymity, you have to be thoughtful about what you share online.
There's one kind of privacy where someone has an archive of all reddit comments ever and looks you up.
There's another kind of privacy where your cousin sees your reddit user id and looks up your comment history and finds out you are [_____insert secret here___].
Deletion of your history is a protection against the second kind.
Despite the hubris and stupidity of Reddit's management, it's still a longer lived repository of information than most people's blogs or web forums. It's also more accessible than mailing lists, Discord, or other social media sites. It's far from perfect but at least it exists.
I can't imagine Voltaire claiming any right to be able to delete a pamflet. I think we need to have forgiveness baked into our social layer more, so that forgetting isn't the default.