Video description as of 2023-06-23 10:15 PDT:
This video shows that Reddit refused to delete all comments and posts of its users when they close their account via a CCPA / GDPR request. Posts and comments may contain PII. Specifically, Reddit tells users that they must delete the content themselves, which isn’t realistic if a user creates a lot of posts. Even if a user does delete their content, Reddit restores the content within a few days.
Video transcript:
- 2023-06-13 @ 15:15 PDT: user states he deleted all posts and comments
- 2023-06-16 @ 10:15 PDT (3 days later): user states all posts and comments have been restored
- 2023-06-19: user decides to submit a legal request under CCPA to delete content
- 2023-06-19 @ 11:07 PDT: user receives reply from “Reddit Legal Support” (RLS) which states they will delete the account but not the content associated with the account. It is up to the owner of the account to remove the content [e-mail contents reproduced below]
Reddit Legal Support (Reddit Support)
Jun 19, 2023, 11:07 PDT
Hello,
We would be happy to help you delete your Reddit account if you have one. Before we proceed please note:
1. Account deletion is irreversible.
2. Posts and comments must be separately deleted before deleting your account. If not separately deleted, the content of the posts and comments will remain visible and disassociated from any account. If you want your posts and comments removed, follow the instructions on our help page.
Once the above mentioned information is removed to your satisfaction, please submit your deletion request by using your Reddit account and this form so we know it's really you making the request.
More information about account deletion is available in our Privacy Policy.
Kind regards,
Reddit Legal Support
- 2023-06-19 @ 12:02 PDT: user replies back to RLS stating it is unrealistic expectation for end user to manually delete and alleges violation of CCPA [reply reproduced below]
Hello,
If I understand your response properly, you are refusing to delete all data associated with my account. I believe this is illegal and in violation of the CPR. In this case the onus is on you, Reddit, to delete all of the content associated with my account.
It is besides the point but last week I already deleted all of the posts and comments associated with my account. However Reddit has since restored most of the content.
It is untenable to demand all users to manually delete content when Reddit itself does not provide a self-serve mechanism to mass-delete content. Some users have thousands of posts and millions of comments.
Just as a reminder, my CPA request to delete my account and all associated data was made on June 19th 2023 and
must be completed by August 3rd 2023.
- 2023-06-24 @ 10:45 PDT: user has not received a reply from RLS. He decided to painstakingly delete all posts and comments while screen recording the effort. Video continues with the user manually deleting posts for his account (https://www.reddit.com/user/nucleocide). Then fast forwards to the end of the segment where the last posts are deleted
- 2023-06-25 @ 10:25 PDT: user discovers posts and comments are restored, again
User concludes video and clarifies why this is a violation of CCPA:
At this point it appears impossible to manually delete posts and comments on Reddit and expect them to stay deleted.
By not deleting all posts and comments in an automated way there is no way to guarantee that no PII [Personally Identifiable Information] has been left behind.
For example ...
<user gives example of a comment from 6 months ago on his account which includes his real first name and last name. Screen capture shows the comment was edited recently>
Since there is no guarantee that every single post and comment is free from PII, Reddit must delete all comments and posts from an account upon receiving a GDPR / CPA request.
Reddit Discussion on “/r/videos”: https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/14je01k/reddit_may_be_violating_the_fucking_ccpa/
https://codepen.io/Deestan/full/gOQagRO/
Deletes all comments or swap them with anything eg “I’ve moved to Lemmy”
Removed by mod
It also seems Reddit has turned on rate limiting early. I’ve had to run PDS a number of times to try and get all of my comments. At first I was just editing them, but since it’s rate limited, it would only get 1 comment every few seconds, with the reddit server responding “You’ve done this too much recently, try waiting 3 seconds” in between.
I’ve now moved on to editing and then deleting, since it won’t keep cycling over the edited messages and overwriting them again. I wish PDS would check to see if the comment had already been edited by a previous run and skip if the comment already contained the message chosen to replace. Then you could run it as many times as needed to replace all comments.
If anyone uses this, they may need to add a 5-20 second delay between each modification due to Reddits existing API rate changes.
My 11 year old account took about 8 hours to churn through with the script.
Craziness. I’m a long time PDS user and I’ve never had an issue with it or with my deleted comments getting rez’d. The boat must actually be sinking if they’re resorting to these kinds of desperate actions.
Removed by mod
I’m not familiar with this - what are you referring to? (It may not display the same on my UI.)
I did wonder about this. I wiped my account before the protests picked up and it is unaffected. But a few comments seem to express that some of their older content was restored. I hope we learn more about what happened here.
A little worrisome, isn’t it? But also entirely expected. What a dystopia we live in.
Doesn’t seem to work.
First off browser didn’t even allow to open embed website within none securely written website. With less secure setting old.reddit.com will refuse connection.
How to make it work?
Perhaps try a different browser. Worked fine for a couple of accounts in fire fox.
Firefox won’t let me open it within that tool.
Edge and Chrome will allow me to open it but old.reddit.com refuses the connection. I guess they countered it or something ?
Yeah, I heard reddit stopped allowing it to delete posts, though mainly they’ve blocked it.
You tried moving the icon into the firefox bookmark toolbar then running it within reddit?