this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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Privacy
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I really need to get around to wiping my old content from Reddit. Much like Facebook, I just ignored it when I was done with the platform.
I'm skeptical that actually deletes it. Seems trivial for them to have backups if the plan is to sell our old content.
I'm skeptical too.
Lots of software is designed so the delete button just flags an entry so it doesn't show to low privilege users on the front end, while the data persists in the database where database admins and the like can still access it.
Online it's wise to assume every website acts like this if you don't actually run the site yourself with full admin access to the underlying web server and database . Once what you write gets on a site it is permanently out of your control in most cases.
Yeah... I'm like 99% positive Reddit wisened up to scrubbing and have been preserving backups for years, essentially rendering all forms of update/deletion useless.
All they'd have to do is have a separate "hidden" db that mirrors production, with separate business rules to ignore all non-mod updates/deletions beyond 12 or 24 hours.
The best you can do now is stop giving them content.
I also wouldn't be surprised if even the automated processes that edit your comment to be gibberish even accomplishes that. Text is, in the software world, remarkably cheap to store, even at volume. It also compresses easily, is remarkably easy to tie to version control mechanisms, and with reddit's comment system can easily be structured as a part of an existing dialogue tree. They know people are pissed at them and are looking to nuke their comment history, so I wouldn't be surprised if they already have multiple cold storage backups of reddit's entire site comment history over the course of months or years. Right now, that data is the most valuable thing they have, their reputation as the "front page of the internet" be damned.
I did it. It's a cleansing experience.
What did you use? I don't really want to just delete everything - heck I wouldn't mind having AI generated a sentence or two to replace all my comments. 🤣
Not the guy you asked but I had chat gpt write up a few paragraphs about how Reddit used to care about it's users and why it sucks now. Then used power delete suite to overwrite every post and comment with it.
If you search for delete all comments you can usually find some js, or greasemonkey pattern, or script, etc.
I've had success using random howtos there. This new TOS change is news to me and I may delete everything again, will share what I used if/when
I used a command line tool that I can't remember the name of and a quick search isn't bringing up but I'll edit this comment when I'm at my laptop.
Edit as promised: I used shreddit. I did come across that while searching earlier but the name didn't ring a bell.
Be warned, if you search for shreddit there is a paid tool of the same name. That is not what I used.
The tool I used allowed me to give it a GDPR download to nuke everything.
I've heard good things about Power Delete Suite too.
I used Power Delete Suite the other day. It takes a while to run because it's scripted vs using API. Instructions were simple and easy to use. Just let it run in a tab in the background and eventually it will work through all your posts or comments. I set it to just edit all my comments. If you leave the text box empty for what you want it edited to it will put random comments in, such as I like coffee. I like hiking. I like reading. I like beer. Etc.
Power Delete Suite
I used Power Delete Suite and you can set it to edit comments to whatever you want before deleting them. I recommend using something innocuous though as some subs have their AutoMod set to reject spammy looking stuff.
I’ve found that it didn’t work very well for an account that had thousands of years old comments though. I haven’t tried to run it again yet since this was just a couple of days ago but it did a good job editing and deleting newer stuff and getting everything on my less verbose accounts.
It was free and didn’t require giving your login credentials to some third party like shreddit and redact, so just depends on what you’re looking for.