Protip: don't do this.
Send a GDPR request instead. Use a VPN if necessary.
Keywords:
Article 17 GDPR. Right to erasure ('right to be forgotten')
and, if necessary:
Framstags freundlicher Folterfragebogen
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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They will tell you you have to delete it yourself.
Comments are technically not necessarily covered under GDPR after they are decoupled from your account and they have no knowledge that it contains other personal data. (which they do not have to check by themselves, that would be ridiculous anyways)
So yes, you do need to run PowerDeleteSuite and then delete your account via account settings (which then triggers deletion in accordance of Article 17)
Is... Is this a correct translation?
Yes. It missed the joke though. Framstag is the combination of Friday and Saturday in German. It is used for advertising by a store chain named Penny.
So what’s the joke then?
German humour 🤷♂️
Lol I was waiting for them to explain the joke before this would inevitably be my reply.
They are selling the data soon. Do you really think they haven't replicated the data to archive storage?
"But muh gdpr right to delete!" Yeah, they don't fucking care
u could also try making small valid changes to detail over time until the posted content is unrecognizable and probably** false.
eg: i drive a red car
i drive a blue car
i drive a blue truck
i dont drive anything
those are all possibly true. but alot of them are incorrect.
A python script hooked up to the openai API could be a fun way to play with this. Just edit the comments with random bs somehow marginally related to the original topic but incorrect.
It's a real shame though because those old comments are often lifesavers when you're looking into really niche subjects.
I was thinking about manually editing every comment to replace them with lorem ipsums and similar rubbish text, I wonder if they would mark that as "suspicious activity" and lock me out of my account? I read some people in the past had similar issues with mass deletions or edits.
the last fun way to use reddit
It looks like it does but there are many reports of people finding their comments restored. Their username is deleted but the comment/post is back.
Read the issues on that git and you'll see that it only works on comments visible from your profile which has a maximum limit. It doesn't get everything, because of that profile limit. There is a python script listed in there but it requires an API key.
PowerDeleteSuite doesn't work for me.
https://old.reddit.com/u/me/overview takes me to a login page (even though I'm already signed in) and when I sign in there, the same page just comes back again without the credentials I typed in.
Same thing happens in Firefox and Edge.
I swear it worked last year. Is it now broken or am I just really stupid?
That's all it does for me, too.
I have 13 years of comments and posts to delete
Holy shit I wasted 13 years on reddit...
Same. It's 12 years for me.
Anyway, here's to wasting another 13 years in the fediverse! 🍺
update: turns out PowerDeleteSuite and others can only delete your 1000 most recent comments (a limit set by reddit), but I found something that actually works and does a thorough job.
https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit
There are step-by-step instructions on the page.
I'm running the program in PowerShell with the GDPR option, and it's been nicely chugging away for hours now.
~~I must be an idiot or something because I've been trying to figure out how to use shreddit and after an hour of fiddling with things all I can manage is powershell telling me it can't use "<" or telling me I got the command syntax wrong.~~
~~Maybe the directions assume the user has some knowledge of programming stuff, but I sure as heck don't know it.~~
Edit: I was an idiot...
Edit 2: it's working but I have to babysit it. It stops ~~randomly.~~ after 100 posts without gdpr export
It got all my posts, it's just working for about 2 minutes on my comments before it just stops and I have to re-enter the command.
That's strange. It took me a while to figure out as well, but then worked non-stop for an entire day.
This is what I ran:
C:\Users\workPC\Documents\reddit-data\shreddit-windows.exe --username blah --password blah --client-id blah --client-secret blah --gdpr-export-dir C:\Users\workPC\Documents\reddit-data\export_blah_20240225
It's possible reddit is rate limiting you, or the program loses access to the gdpr folder it's pulling the links from (antivirus?). You could try running it from a different path or on a different pc.
I ran the .exe from the same "reddit-data" folder that contained the gdpr files just to be safe with folder permissions and stuff.
So I finally managed to figure it out and let the gdpr run for 3 days.
After day 1 I figured out without the gdpr folder, you can only delete a certain amount, 100 I think.
The rate limit is also set to 30/min (sleep 2s between actions) so I managed to get two instances running at once without hitting the limit.
One gdpr deleting from 2010 onward, one with an auto-typer hitting f3+enter ever 2 minutes 21 seconds to delete from 2023 backward.
Took another 2 days but I managed to delete my old profile. Googling will bring up a few archived posts on other websites, and name mentions but no posts, and the random sampling I did showed nothing when I tried checking on the individual comments.
So it took me a bit to figure out, but I managed.
They definitely assume people have a certain level of knowledge of things when doing the documentation, but luckily it's easy to find information.
Cool, you managed to get it working after all. I never used Power Shell before this either.
It's ridiculous the average user has to jump through all these hoops just to regain control of their own data.
Hey maybe someday there will be a website that just allows you to delete everything they have on you at any time for any reason with only a few clicks and no input on their side...
I can dream!
Worked for me, using old reddit (not sure if that makes any difference). I'm on Firefox.
I noticed that they reverted the modified comments. tried again. haven't checked the current status.
I wonder if a GDPR delete request is in order?
It didn't for me. Took ages, cleared the list when sorting by new, but left a ton of comments in place that I can see when sorting by top.
Why bother? At best it does nothing and at worst it deletes useful information on the internet.
If enough people did it I think it would help stop people from going to reddit for info and make them seek out other websites.
Except people like me sometimes are desperate for a solution. Besides, I suspect they are going to shoot themselves in the foot even more with some bad policy.
I don't really don't understand the dislike of Reddit. If you don't want to use it then don't. Overtime I suspect they will fall into decline
I don’t really don’t understand the dislike of Reddit
Have you been living in a cave? https://github.com/MaximilianKohler/Archive/wiki/Reddit
Is anyone concerned that by deleting their reddit comments they might be reducing their chances of being able to someday tongue punch Spez in his sweaty fart-box?
Yes