this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Any way to reliably delete/redact Reddit comments? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I used the Power Delete Suite fork by pkolyvas and it worked and my comments were redacted/deleted correctly for over a week.

Today I checked my account and sorted my comments by "Top" and to my surprise I see that many of my top rated comments have been forcibly brought back by Reddit. The curious thing is that it's only top comments on technical subs like r/MachineLearning that were restored, they must have realized that being in the Google search results for technical questions is critical for them.

Is it because they detect "bot activity" and they simply revert it? Has anyone had success with doing that manually or semi-manually?

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Remember this is a business issue for Reddit- by removing your content, you are making their database less valuable. You should assume the edit and delete system is actively hostile to this sort of activity.

To that end, I don't suggest deleting at all. Deleting a lot of comments is a big red flag. As is any kind of automated activity like doing one every 5 seconds.

I would also suggest, if you want to devalue the database as quickly as possible, don't bother doing all of your comments. Do the ones that are most popular. And don't delete them, edit them. Whatever edits you put in should be coherent sentences so a spelling and grammar check would not flag them. And don't do one every 5 seconds, do one every 5 minutes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Depending on where you live, submit a deletion request under your privacy law. If they don’t do it for you, most laws allow you to sue them individually or as part of a class action, or you could report it to your privacy regulator and sic that headache on them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I found I had to run it multiple times. I also found that while it removed everything from my profile, a Google search of my user name & site:Reddit.com showed a lot of comments still there. 30 pages of search results in fact. There was not really any pattern as to which ones had been kept. Was quite cathartic going through them and over writing with gibberish a couple of times before deleting.

There was some discussion here about this issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/14dcxy4/reddit_restored_the_last_six_months_of_my/

For anyone who hasn't done it yet, better get on it as most of the useful deleting tools also use the API. I would also suggest the first few runs of power query you only edit the comments, not delete. That way you can get an idea of how many it got vs missed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I had to rerun it a number of times as well, but eventually it got everything. It's a nice set it and forget it tool. I checked a day later and they were all gone. Will check again before the switch flips.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would assume reddit keeps backups of all their databases (unless they're incredibly stupid) and so they could restore any instance they wanted. Yes, you can delete your comments from the current instances but I guarantee they're backed up somewhere and will remain in storage for years to come. So no, there's no way to reliably delete your comments.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I meant reliable as in "they don't detect it and won't automatically say that the previous version of the comment is better". Something like Power Delete Suite but which has some random element to generate unique gibberish for each comment.