Reddit removes years of chat and message archives from users' accounts

Read about how they work.

No need to be quite so condescending is there?
I fully understand how they work.
Seems like this growth they should be trying to achieve is fucking futile when they:

• cut off the apps that a portion of their most active users use
• prevent helpful bots (automod etc.) working correctly or being financially viable due to API changes
• shuttered an award system that helped maintain engagement via vain dopamine acquisition and actively made them money with no replacement in sight other than some data mined financial incentive program which will lead to a lack of genuine discussion
• spat in the face of their largely volunteer moderation community who volunteer their time for free to help keep things smooth
• delete the content histories of their users when it isn’t publicly facing. Users give content to platform, that’s how Reddit exists, to remove DMs from users it makes it very apparent they’re content pigs and nothing more. Can’t have a transactional platform (content to profit) if the content doesn’t feel any incentive to use the platform.

Not to mention, infrastructure costs lead to growth.
If you don’t have the resources to support your current platform, you shouldn’t be actively trying to grow the platform by discarding older content. It makes those accessing and making use of the content (be it individual or institutional) lose trust in the quality of data.

Great growth strategy that.