this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023

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Reddit Migration

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Reddit keeps undeleting my account and posts. Is there anything I can do as an American Citizen? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This is pissing me off to no end. I went on reddit and signed in out of habbit as I have a couple times already and before my account was gone and it wouldnt let me sign in.

Now I did it again and realized that my account actually was undeleted and allowed me to login AND all the posts that I overwrited and deleted with Power Delete Suite where back. I am so pissed right now.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think people may need to wait. Here's what I've read and seen myself so far:

You can only edit/delete so many comments as it seems reddit only indexes the last 1000. After editing/deleting everything you can, you can see you still have unedited/undeleted comments by searching your username like: site:reddit.com "usernameHere". I saw plenty of comments going back years (I have a 14yr old account) that I wasn't able to touch.

The strategy seems to be to be requesting your data from reddit and then use the comment ids contained in that export to target them for edits/deletes via the API, assuming it's still usable for small scripts like the ones we want to use.

We're tracking our requested/received dates in this thread if you're interested in adding yours to the list.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@earthling

@Rick

The lack of indexing and privacy status of the subs likely contributes - but it's also API rate limiting for many of the automated tools like Power Delete Suite.

It will appear that your comments are gone, but the limiter prevents activity from being permanently written over X calls per minute.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm using PRAW/python and app credentials I made just for me and PRAW seems to have some good rate limit logic built in.

I also tried Power Delete Suite which seemed to work very quickly and that caused me to worry that I was running afoul of rate limits. My own python script utilizing PRAW works much more slowly but IMO that's a good thing.

I'm hoping that once I have a nice list of comment ids I can hit them all via my script/PRAW, however long it takes.

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

@earthling

@Rick

j0be, the dev for PDS, was informed about the rate limit issue ~2 years ago. I think they recently updated the script to open the discussion page on reddit about it, but there is no limit logic currently.

My personal experience is that using PDS requires multiple attempts - however, the tool is working until it surpasses the call limit.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I just want to point out that if you use one of those comment deleter apps (powersuite, shreddit etc) they cannot delete comments from private subs as they are hidden. So if you tried deleting your stuff while subs are marked private those comments will not be deleted and will reappear on your profile once the sub(s) go back to normal mode. (at the time I'm writing this, there's still 3600 subs currently dark according to https://reddark.untone.uk/ so if you commented in any one of them marked private you'll have to wait for them to come back to public mode to erase them.)

Also, when they do come back they won't always show up normally in your profile. I've had to flip between hot/new/controversial a few times to see them all as they pop back up.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I want to point out that while this may be true, I edited, then deleted mine before the subs started going private and when I checked with google, my comments and posts were showing [deleted] when I googled on them and clicked on them until yesterday. Now they are back. Reddit is restoring deleted comments and posts.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I wonder if these undeletions are just the Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) taking time to sync up?

So you login to one Reddit instance and delete/modify all your posts. This will take time to trickle down to all the other servers in the network. When you next login you are logging into a different reddit instance that has not yet synced up all the changes you made.

For example where I am there are four reddit servers when I check the DNS for reddit.com


;; ANSWER SECTION:
reddit.com.		92	IN	A	151.101.129.140
reddit.com.		92	IN	A	151.101.1.140
reddit.com.		92	IN	A	151.101.65.140
reddit.com.		92	IN	A	151.101.193.140

Just a theory that might explain what people are seeing. That said with the behaviour of reddit admins over the last few weeks I wouldn't put it past them to be undeleting though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You can only delete you top 1000 posts, best 1000 post and newest 1000 posts, the rest remain

If the sub was dark when you ran the scripts they will reappear if the sub reopens

Then there is the sync issues other mention

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

are you sure those subs weren't restricted/private during the time of deletion/editing?

seems some of my edited/deleted comments still show the original text, but I also got some messages from Reddit, that I can't edit this comment, because the sub is private/restricted at the moment

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I've had 2 posts come back that I deleted before the blackouts.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well shit. Deleted all my comments yesterday and today they are all back.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was made aware of this tool Redact - which deletes your digital footprint.
That might be something worth trying?

https://redact.dev/
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/145g5a1/thank_you_spez/jnlklho/?context=3

Thanks to u/Hokulewa

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

I did look into it yesterday but the closed-source nature of it and having to share one's login data does seem kinda sus.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@z3n0x

@Rick @kriss0706

Handing over credentials to a potential bad actor is absolutely a valid concern.. unless you didn't verify email and have no interest in using the account again.

In that case it becomes an effective means of protest. ;)

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

interesting way of looking at it :D

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

I've used this tool. It deleted my history.

I then checked by googling "reddit {username}" and found a bunch of comments that were restored.

Reddit is playing games.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

wow, kinda makes me glad I deleted mine the day before 😳

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would check again to make sure

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just did, mine's thankfully still actually deleted.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been wondering if Reddit has been fucking with stuff just since the API stuff started. This is a data point indicating yes.

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

On the one hand CDNs not updating would explain it. On the other? Given how twitter tried 'not-banning' people to keep numbers inflated but muzzle dissent? A little paranoia is warrented.

Just... keep away from the tinfoil.

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

Especially since spez said he is inspired by Musk's handling of Twitter...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have a feeling they're going to undelete any activity within the past or next few weeks. I personally am leaving Reddit alone for now. In another two or three weeks (months?), I plan to go in and delete all my old posts slowly over time (or replace with some statement about moving to kbin social).

I'll likely write a manual automated script to parse through and overwrite over a decade's worth of comments/postings to ensure it's erased/gone.

But for now I've blocked the reddit domains from my router so I don't accidentally visit the site and ensure they see zero traffic from my IP address

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

Keeping the account around for now for the same reason.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What????

You deleted your account - and sign-in stopped working after that (since it was deleted, credentials are no longer valid).

Then suddenly you got your account undeleted and you can log in again to the formerly deleted reddit account??

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

That's exactly what happened

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Same thing happening to me. I want to close my account but not while they continue to do this.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Not much. If they keep doing it, not a lot can be done.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Shreddit

Also, why delete your account when you can sell it?

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

I only have like 10k karma I dont think it would be worth much

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most of the time its not only the karma that makes it valuable, but more importantly the age. Older accounts are worth more because they look less like advertising bots

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

Very interesting.

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

Where do I go to sell mine? I have like 5 7+ year old accounts.

I think selling will inflict maximum pain for reddit while netting me a little gift.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would breaking a ton of rules and getting the account banned remove all the content?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think so, your comments should still be there, only the account appears as [deleted].

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

I think it can if you use power delete suite to edit all your comments but dont delete them. I'm hoping it trips up the detection and I would recommend people do the same

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, overwriting with gibberish is better than deleting, especially since reddit has backups and I've seen a few people saying their stuff was restored.

Apps unfortunately have limits in how many posts/comments they can fetch, but overwriting some is better than nothing I guess.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Yeah, it seems if you run power delete suite a few times it covers them all, I had it edit about 4000 comments with "I deleted my reddit account and all my comments and posts but reddit has decided to undelete my account and comments so I have decided to let people know. Fuck this stupid site"

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

What if you edit them all?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I just tried doing that with power delete suite but I didnt have it remove the comments just edited them with this "I deleted my reddit account and all my comments and posts but reddit has decided to undelete my account and comments so I have decided to let people know. Fuck this stupid site"

I would recommend people do something similar as deleting your account and posts doesnt seem to help.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I deleted my comments and edited them but they keep coming back. I have notified the authorities in my country. No idea if anything will come of it though.

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

Try using the fork of Power Delete Suite that waits 5 seconds between each edit. That seemed to work for me.

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

Did you use the fork of Power Delete Suite that waits 5 seconds between each edit? That seems to have worked to have my edits stay permanent.

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

Which fork is that? There's like a bajillion different forks and none of the most recently updated one mention anything about a timer :/

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

A few states have gdpr like laws you could use to request deletion. In California it’s called the ccpa.

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

According to Reddit, there is no official mass deletion toll, meaning the company is not in compliance with the CCPA.

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