Before I left Reddit, I used a plugin through the api to replace all of my comments with random gibberish and then delete them. Part of this was because (mandatory) fuck spez. But more importantly, it was to protect the anonymity of my account. After years of posting, there is likely enough personal information shared to potentially connect my Reddit habits to my online identity. I wasn’t planning on using Reddit again in the future on that account, but I left it open in order to maintain some security control over the account. I’m not really sure what to do at this point because I still consider it a security vector that’s a bit concerning. There’s no way I can manually edit and delete all of my content with the snail’s-pace reddit UI, and I have no ability to assure that my content will remain unavailable or at least not publicly displayed.

  • Chozo
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    1753 months ago

    The API-based deletion tools usually have to be tuned to delete posts slowly enough to not trigger Reddit’s abuse detection. Otherwise, they’ll automatically undo bulk changes like that.

    There’s no way I can manually edit and delete all of my content with the snail’s-pace reddit UI

    This is, unfortunately, the only way to guarantee that your posts stay deleted. My account was 15 years old. I still log in every few weeks or so to go manually delete more comments. It’ll be a while.

    • Transporter Room 3
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      263 months ago

      I had to fiddle with my own on my old laptop, I used one of the plethora of github scripts, but then they changed the api to limit access to (I think) about 100/min, so I just changed the delays to 1000ms so it would only delete 60/min.

      Took two weeks, but I still haven’t seen any old content pop back up outside of archives and quotes from other comments in the thread.

      I search for a couple random things I remember saying on ddg/bing/Google whenever I think about it, so far nothing.

      As I’ve said before about certain countries, you know your platform is doing well when you (essentially) tell people “No, sorry, you can’t leave.”

    • Tiefling IRL
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      3 months ago

      I got permabanned so I can’t even delete my shit :/

      (For anyone curious, it was for suggesting that riot police should quit their jobs en masse following RvW. I still stand by that statement)

      • @grue
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        183 months ago

        My account was “permanently suspended” for “mod abuse” because I reported misinformation in r/conservative.

        • @ngwoo
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          3 months ago

          I pissed off a power mod and got banned from a handful of subreddits and accidentally posted on one of them with an alt. Both accounts permabanned for ban evasion - even though one of those subreddits was one I only ever posted on with one account. Alts get nuked as soon as I make a single post anywhere, too.

          Could get around it with a new email and IP but meh

          • @JigglySackles
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            13 months ago

            they detect alts by IP? that’s super reliable…🙄

            • @ngwoo
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              23 months ago

              They use machine learning to detect ban evasion. It takes into account email/phone used to sign up, IP, device fingerprinting, and behaviour on the site.

        • @JigglySackles
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          43 months ago

          dude that sub is almost as easy to get banned from as pyongyang. they bitch about snowflakes but are all half melted snowflakes themselves. absolute dumpster fire of amalgamated fragile masculinity. NEETs, incels, and racists only.

          • @grue
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            63 months ago

            That’s the thing, though: I’m not talking about being banned from the sub. My account was suspended site-wide because the snowflake mods reported me to the admins for “abusing the moderation system” (again: for reporting comments as misinformation because they actually were, in factual reality, misinformation), and the admins upheld that suspension even on appeal.

            Reddit’s admins actively support spreading fascist misinformation

            • @JigglySackles
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              43 months ago

              wow, that’s garbage. glad I’m not there anymore

      • Chozo
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        93 months ago

        I had a site-wide, week-long ban for saying that Nazis who got punched in the face deserved it. Fuck that place, lmao

        • @[email protected]
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          -33 months ago

          Well I personally think your ban might be deserved. I don’t think anyone deserves to be punched in the face for what they believe. A punch in the face might only be deserved for something they do. Depends on the situation I guess.

          • @vala
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            73 months ago

            Idk that we need to let Nazis do Nazi things before using violence to stop them. If someone makes a serious credible threat it’s ok to stop it with violence.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 months ago

        My first site ban was for “it’s always a good day to punch a Nazi”

        My second was for “fuck /u/spez”

        My permaban was for dropping the “you like that, you fucking <developmentally disabled person>” reference in an amusingly appropriate thread, and the mod who did it just wasn’t having the “i thought it was a hilariously topical meme reference in the context of the post, but I completely understand and will stay completely away from that term in the future” (it was probably the only time I had used the word in an interaction in, like, at least 5 or 6 years)

        At any rate, the moderation here is overall much more sensible, imo.

      • @[email protected]
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        13 months ago

        Same but my ban was for talking about piracy in /r/movies and then accidently posting there again months later on one of my alt accounts.

        • @[email protected]
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          23 months ago

          Mine was for arguing with the BreadTube mod after he banned me for asking “Once you get rid of polices what’s the plan exactly? A burglar enters your house, what then?”

    • @[email protected]
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      63 months ago

      I’m banned from reddit permanently. But I suspect my information is still there. Unsure what to do about it, aside from embracing the fuckedness.

    • @[email protected]
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      43 months ago

      If you’re comfortable mucking about in the dev console and have some aptitude for coding, it’s absolutely possible to reverse-engineer the browser calls thoroughly enough that it’s literally impossible for Reddit to tell serverside that you’re not accessing it through a browser. At that point, all you have to do is introduce some logic to loosely replicate human behavior (time-jittered, of course, as well as some varied activity windows), and you should be able to kick it off on a raspberry pi or some other low-power “I don’t care if it’s on for a few weeks” system and let it ride.

    • @gedaliyahOP
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      33 months ago

      Yeah, it’s easy enough for reddit to detect rapid edits over a 1-day period and just undo all of them. That seems to be the case here. The edits I did manually were retained.

      • Vanon
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        23 months ago

        I used Power Delete Suite (javascript IIRC, via Firefox, year ago) to edit and delete, and mine are still gone. Not sure if it is still effective.

        Reddit is probably less and less tolerant about edits and deletions, now that they’re full speed on selling our data. Still see plenty of deleted posts when I’m searching for things, which is… nice I guess (bittersweet).

    • @[email protected]
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      23 months ago

      They could just look 5+ years back, gauge the average rate of comment editing (with falloff for time since comment creation), take that as a standard, and pass that as a filter over any modern edits. You would literally have to edit slower than the average bear, especially accounting for older comments.