Reddit users lose all chats, messages as part of its transition to new architecture

US-based social news and discussion site Reddit said that all the user messages and chat history on its platform are no longer available if they were made prior to January 1. 

Reddit explained in its blog on 22 June that it is moving to a new chat architecture and that pulling off older messages will enable a "smooth and quick transition" to the new architecture.  

"In our continued pursuit of empowering communities, we are transitioning to a new chat infrastructure," the blog post mentioned. "In an effort to have a smooth and quick transition to this new infrastructure, we will migrate chat messages sent from January 1, 2023 onward. This change will be effective starting June 30th." 

That said, while the change took effect from 30 June, many users only noticed it days later and were quite upset. As the company did not notify users directly, many of them discovered Reddit’s plans only after their message logs disappeared, preventing them from backing up their histories on their own terms. 

The move also comes as Reddit is grappling with a lot more backlash recently. On 12 June, thousands of Reddit forums went dark to protest Reddit's decision to charge third-party developers millions of dollars in fees for application programming interface (API) access.  

API is a framework that allows programmes to communicate and connect with each other. In the case of a social platform like Twitter, or Reddit, this means developers outside the company can create programs that connect with the main product. 

According to a blog, more than 6,500 sub-reddits have made their forums private during the blackouts — including r/gaming, r/aww, r/Music and r/pics. They protested against the new policies that made it unviable for third-party apps like Apollo to remain active. 

To be sure, in March this year, Twitter also announced that it will eliminate free API access for third-party developers, which left many worried. In simple terms, this means the site’s automated account's access will stop, unless the person in charge of them decides to pay for access. That said, researchers who leveraged Twitter’s API to collect public data from the site cannot access those unless they pay for the service. 

Last week, Reddit also announced other changes. The company said that it would phase out the existing coin system which is used to recognise exceptional contributors. That means “users can no longer buy new coins, and all awards and coins will go away after 12 September”. The existing approach leads to "clutter" and provides content that some don't believe is all that valuable, according to the company, it said. 

The move to withdraw this system and replace it with something simpler and more direct has again raised concerns among users who have grown familiar to the specific awards and medals associated with Reddit’s age-old system. 

In the recent move where messages and chat history disappeared, the company however,  said, there may be a way to recover some of those messages. Users can request account data from Reddit through an online form, and the archive might include conversations from before 2023, it said. 

Reddit, just like Twitter, is going through a hard time right now. To address these changes and user concerns, the company will have to make some drastic changes in the near future.