• @TropicalDingdong
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    15010 months ago

    I used some tools to corrupt about 10 years of comments and posts of mine.

    • @[email protected]
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      7110 months ago

      While that’s the correct thing to do in my opinion, it would be a mistake to assume that Reddit didn’t store your original comments.

      By corrupting their dataset, you may actually be helping them recognize maliciously edited comments.

      • @khannie
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        3510 months ago

        it would be a mistake to assume that Reddit didn’t store your original comments.

        They were fairly specific about not doing that (I’d imagine largely because of GDPR).

        I deleted 10 years of “content” before I left and checked their policies. They apparently actually do properly delete from their servers.

        • @Frozengyro
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          2110 months ago

          I’ve got a bridge in the desert I’d like to sell you.

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            GDPR is no joke. Storing a handful of comments is not worth the penalty if they get caught.

            Note that I speak from experience as part of a company that needs to comply with the regulations. We do it because the risk of violation is 10000000% not worth it no matter how annoying and arduous it is to comply.

          • @khannie
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            1110 months ago

            That’s true but it’s far easier to globally implement rather than trying to segment. Very difficult to accurately prove a user isn’t EU resident across an entire userbase.

            • It's A Faaaahhkeah!
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              510 months ago

              That’s probably why they don’t let you access Reddit with a VPN, so they can have some idea of location.

      • @TropicalDingdong
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        1810 months ago

        Yeah, I mean I knew that when I was doing it.

        Sometimes all you can do is make a symbolic gesture that really does nothing, and even if it does nothing, you should still do it.

        Probably leaving and supporting lemmy by paying for some developer fees (i’m on the patreon), posting and commenting, probably 100x more damaging to Reddit.

        • @[email protected]
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          1010 months ago

          FWIW, I requested an old reddit accounts data the other day under CCPA and all the contamination was in there. My guess is their backend updates every so often. i guess i made a good call to edit my comments and leave them there to simmer before i deleted them along with the account. perhaps this is the way?

      • @[email protected]
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        510 months ago

        Mass edits made rapidly are obviously suspect, too… If the same user edits anything more than a dozen comments in, say a minute, you have to ask what’s going on

      • @TropicalDingdong
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        4010 months ago

        Its not my idea, but I could probably dig up the tool I used. Dollars to donuts, it doesn’t work any more.

        This might have been the tool I used. I dont think so because I overwrote everything with one message, but google around you’ll find similar.

        https://github.com/adriantache/YARCO

        • @Maalus
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          1410 months ago

          If you overwrote with a single message, then your messages are back to what they were.

          • @KnightontheSun
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            910 months ago

            Not necessarily true. I overwrote several thousand comments with a different tool and used three different quotes on greed. I have periodically checked and about two dozen came back. I just manually changed them at that point.

        • @[email protected]
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          10 months ago

          This would be better if it fed the parent comment into ChatGPT prefixed with “create a plausible but factually incorrect aggressive response to ”

          Feed the machine to the machine!

      • @Sabin10
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        810 months ago

        A tool like that would almost definitely require api access to function. If that was still possible, most of us wouldn’t be here having this conversation.

        • @TropicalDingdong
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          1410 months ago

          A tool like that would almost definitely require api access to function. If that was still possible, most of us wouldn’t be here having this conversation.

          No it didn’t use the API. You had to run it in browser and be logged in to reddit.

        • @[email protected]
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          510 months ago

          The tool I used had an extension for Firefox. You then used that Reddit extension so you could get more scrolling on your post history. Then you pressed a button and it would insert gibberish for all comments and posts. Then you’d go next page and do it again.

    • @[email protected]
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      2110 months ago

      I think Reddit caught on to this. I tried destroying my comment history (~7 years with 600k karma) with a few of the available tool on GitHub.

      Found my account permabanned next time trying to login. People should attempt to eliminate/poison as much as possible, but Reddit has all the comments and modifications in a database somewhere to sell it all to whatever AI is the highest bidder.

      They have to do something to make money after taking away awards. The advertising is absolute shit and not worth the $100 entry fee.

    • VaultBoyNewVegas
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      1310 months ago

      I edited mine via a tool to say fuck Reddit and Steve Huffman is a greedy pig boy.

      • PlasmaDistortion
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        2510 months ago

        I used a tool that edited my comments to replace it with gibberish. Supposedly Reddit still retains deleted comments but if you edit them, it only keeps the latest version. So by editing it you make the comments worthless.

        • @[email protected]
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          1710 months ago

          I also edited my comments to be basically a Lemmy ad and completely deleted the posts except in a few communities where it could be helpful in the future.

        • citrusface
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          810 months ago

          What tool? I’d like to use it as well.

            • citrusface
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              10 months ago

              Thank you

              Edit - This worked great thank you. Was able to scrub my Twitter as well.

            • @[email protected]
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              110 months ago

              Just redacted 5 years worth of comments with this. Now to let my account sit for a few months so their backups have only my latest masterpieces. Thanks!!!

      • @TropicalDingdong
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        1210 months ago

        I ran a script over all of my comments (through my browser) to edit them into something about how spez had back stabbed the community. I had tens? hundreds of thousands? of comments.

        It took several hours to run, but I did a forward pass (newest to oldest) and a backwards pass (oldest to newest). It bugged out because it had to run so long but I think I got it all.

        I’m not sure this will really do anything because you could pretty easily statistically isolate any one who did what I did, and roll their account history back to a prior state in the training data.

        Regardless, it was the least I could do on the way out the door.

        • @teamevil
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          610 months ago

          I simply got permabanned and my account disappeared.

        • @[email protected]
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          110 months ago

          I did the same, just edited them to basically say Lemmy better and deleted all my posts, then my account.

      • Jo Miran
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        10 months ago

        It replaces them with gibberish. I did the same for my 12+ years worth.