the link they sent is https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/sections/360008917951-Removing-Your-Reddit-Data
Absolute bullshit. I deleted all of my posts and comments individually and they were all restored. Twice! Third time was the charm though. Rather than deleting comments I overwrote them with “Fuck u/spez” and that stuck.
I made multuple attempts to delete my reddit history, using multiple tools. The history kept popping back up.
Many people told me that the problem had something to do with the blackout. Something about history reappearing when private subs return to public. This explanation was total bullshit, there was zero connection between the blackouts and the reappearance of my deleted history.
I finally ran a delete which seems to have stuck. I haven’t deleted my account just in cass.
Wish i though of that before i deleted my account.
Is it only possible to do it manually? I have thousands of comments/posts :(
Power delete suite
I ran Power Delete Suite several times over a week and saved all the CSVs of exported comments, and my Reddit data request returned hundreds more comments than PDS found. e.g. PDS found 8 comments in my local subreddit and response to my data request had over a hundred comments from there.
I’ve seen other posts where users have located their most recent deleted posts and comments despite their profile displaying them as deleted. If the admins said that their website was broken and slowly processing deletions then I’d believe them, it’s Reddit after all, but they instead blamed the script. This smells of beef-fed bullshit.
They’re telling you to check the error log to see if there were errors. For example: Many subs went private. If you posted in sub A and ran the script while it was private, it wouldn’t be able to overwrite that content. If the sub stopped being private that content would come back and it wouldn’t be written over.
Yet they also say they respect your right to delete your data. These 2 statements seem to be in conflict.
I’m sure they wouldn’t just lie to people who were deleting their accounts because reddit lied to them. That’s crazy talk.
Looks like they have a GDPR issue. Nice free money for a lawyer. “Only moderator of closed community can delete” lol
I had some issues using the original PowerDeleteSuite and then found this: PowerDeleteSuite with a 5 second timeout This one worked a treat:
https://github.com/pkolyvas/PowerDeleteSuite
The slight modification allowed me to see that there was an issue with one of my posts, but it also allowed me to keep plowing through 14 years of Reddit. I changed all the content (“No IPOs without APIs”) and let it sit for a week or two to allow it to be backed up and checked. Then I deleted all but 2 subs I used to mod (1 will go soon). So far, checking by AUTHOR: yeilds nothing.
I’ve seen people who claimed to have deleted every single comment manually, and they still got restored.
This is me. I’m this person.
Is there a /c/ you guys can share these together? Get a nice pile of screenshots and details etc
I am also one of those people. It wasn’t all of my comments, but it definitely wasn’t because of a script or because a sub was private. Some comments dead-ass popped back up after being manually deleted.
Seems reasonable, but reddit should still be able to delete those posts and comments from privated subreddits if requested to
It is not reasonable to expect a user to manually delete thousands of comments and posts. Scripts like PowerDeleteSuite are not officially supported by reddit, and they should implement a feature to select all comments and delete them.
I was talking about the reason of why some comments weren’t deleted, which a few weeks ago was being talked about as a conspiracy and was striking me as a little weird conduct by reddit since it was almost a non issue due to the small volume of people doing this compared to the harm of a potential lawsuit.
I agree erasing everything should be easier though
Every time I deleted my comments, some of them came back. It was always different comments that came back. My best guess is that they have a distributed database, and it has federation problems, so records deleted on one instance still appear on another.
I notice they make no mention of the 1000 new, 1000 top and 1000contraveriaal limit on the profile so max 3000. That is the one that caught a lot out too. (As well as private becoming public again)
Court time!
They called OP’s bluff. They should sue, but reddit knows they won’t.
Wouldn’t the EU sue, not a single user?
I would assume that if a few people complain then the governing body will send notices to reddit about their legal requirements under gpdr. Only after several failures and enough people complaining will the EU launch a proper legal action.
The EU doesn’t enforce the GDPR, it’s the member states (or more specifically, the member state where the controller has their main establishment). However, individuals can also sue controllers directly.
I don’t know who to contact or what to do about it, and i dont have time and energy to find out and actually do it haha
What country are you in? Normally you’d contact a lawyer and/or the Ministry of Data Protection
You need more noise about this.
Dang, if only they had a publicly-available API that could ensure your deletions requests were processed. Maybe some day.
in the interest of absolute pedantry, I’d like to point out that they do, in fact, have a publicly available API — it just costs money to use.
Now, on one hand, it’s only 24 cents per 1000 API calls (which is very little for individual use, but adds up quickly for any sort of widely used tool or service). On the other hand, fuck reddit lol.
I ran my delete script and notice some show up again later. I realized that those were in subreddits that had closed in protest making my comments inaccessible. When they reopened it became accessible again.
This sounds more like a reply to a support request because a third party script is not working properly. What exactly did you ask them?
First I made a GDPR request on the website to delete all of my posts and comments from their servers. I dont have the original text for it, but I specifically asked them not to delete my account, just remove posts and comments, so i can keep my subscriptions. This was their reply after a few days:
Hello,
We would be happy to help you delete your Reddit account if you have one. Before we proceed please note:
- Account deletion is irreversible.
- 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 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
Then i responded with:
The problem is that some of my deleted posts and comments seem to be restored. I want them completely removed from your servers.
After a few weeks i got the message in the screenshot.
Does GDPR cover anonymous data?
And is reddit history anonymous in a legal sense?
I’m pretty sure if someone read a bunch of my reddit posts and comments they would be able to locate me, and they would know a lot more about me than some people i speak to for years. I don’t know how it works legally, but morally i think everyone should have the right to purge their online existence.
You don’t have to guess at it. There are sites out there that you can plug a reddit username in and it’ll spit out super creepy levels of personal information.
Or, at least they used to exist, but I haven’t looked in like 8 years.
I’d be curious what a site like that would put together on my accounts. I think it’s a good thing to look at stuff like that every once in a while just so you know what you’re putting out there.
I can’t even use my profile to interact with my previous comment or posts it’s just returns and error everytime I try any request for the passed 4-5 weeks. I can manually browse Reddit to my comment and then edit or delete it but that would be literally impossible for me to find 12 years worth of data like that.
