Useful Information disappearing from the Internet

[Jodistrict]

I have plantar fasciitis, which is a disorder of the plantar fascia, the connective tissue that supports the arch of the foot.  It results in pain at the bottom of the foot.   Approximately 2 million people in the US seek help for plantar fasciitis every year.   It is estimated that podiatrists make around $376 million dollars a year treating plantar fasciitis.  The cause of the disease is not totally understood.  The treatments usually don’t seem to work.  Some people have it for more than 10 years.  The average recovery time can be more than one year.

This brings me to the topic.  I was on a subreddit called “plantar fasciitis”  for people suffering from plantar fasciitis.  It was the most useful subreddit I have been on.  It actually helped me find a treatment that greatly improved my condition.  I have found that podiatrists are almost completely useless and even harmful.  They do things like give cortisone shots that don’t heal the underlying condition and are know to actually harm the foot.

Well, recently I got a message from Reddit that said the subreddit has been shut down for spamming.  The message said “This subreddit was banned due to being used for spam”.  I was astonished because I have never seen spam on this site.  I would check the site 2 or 3 times a day.  Most of the posts were people complaining about their feet.   Not only did they stop the subreddit but all of the previous posts have been removed.  I even did a google search and can’t find any of the posts.   It was a google search that originally led me to this site.  All the information is gone.  If they banned the site, why did they also have to go back and completely delete the past information, thousands of useful posts?

This leads me to wonder about how much useful information has been disappeared from the Internet.   I also wonder if the subreddit was going against the powerful podiatry industry and was shut down.   Is other information being censored from the Internet because it goes against the interests of money making industries?    Is that Internet even useful anymore or will it just end up being spam approved by large corporations?

 

[Whitney Edwards]

I've planar fascitis too. I was struggling to get information as well. I have been suffering since 3 years but no cure. 

[ici]

Information is useful to those who find it useful and useless to those who find it useless.

Reddit is not the entirety of the web. I’m certain you could find useful information regarding this medical condition elsewhere.

Reddit reserves the right to delete any information on their servers as they please. You could start your own website if this dissatisfies you.

[What Am I]

26 minutes ago, ici said:

Reddit is not the entirety of the web.

These days, it almost kind of is. There's that new trope that says Google is now just an improved version of Reddit's built-in search engine. Since the internet's founding, quite a bit of centralization has occurred. If not of information, then at least of the platforms where it's hosted.

[zurew]

You might be able to find some those past posts by using wayback machine.

http://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/reddit.com/r/plantarfasciitis

This is also another option, but this is slow:

https://oldweb.today/?browser=op12#20240901000000/https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantarFasciitis/

 

Edited September 8, 2024 by zurew

[BlueOak]

I used to regret the loss of information in decades gone by, we lost a lot of nuggets in the earlier days of the internet. All it takes is to mildly annoy the wrong advertiser, or person with someone with minor financial backing.

We need to archive information better than we do, it can be very hit-and-miss with the methods we currently use. It is unfortunately something you will come across more with time. Worse, you'll unavoidably lose the people who put out that information also. 

This of course needs to be balanced as information is improved or updated, and allow for private personal data to still be wiped for individuals.

Edited September 9, 2024 by BlueOak