This video shows that Reddit refused to delete all comments and posts of its users when they close their account via a CCPA / GDPR request.

This is absolutely insane, and shows that companies OWN you.

1 point
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Not surprising. That’s the stuff their after anyway. Im trying to cut myself from this type of thing, as much as possible for sure.

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18 points

Not only do they refuse to delete your comments, they do it in such an underhanded way - quietly restoring everything after showing the user that the deletion was successful. For me personally, this is even worse than the whole killing 3rd party apps thing.

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2 points

Yepp

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3 points

Ah, well, that’s what they are used to. All that obscurity in recommendations, weird way comment scores change over time (bots they don’t fight or their own messing), weird way those affect karma, inconsistent application of rules, and so on.

Social media mods like obscurity which is alone a sufficient reason not to use that crap.

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20 points

Sign me up for the class action. I was thinking of just spinning up a selenium script because I’ve tried using one of the bots to delete post history before, and it didn’t work, so I was assuming the API was resisting. Disappointing to see that even clicking through everything doesn’t work reliably.

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3 points

That would be my suggestion as well. There’s a chance that all reddit users will be part of the class, but there’s also a chance that only users who attempted to delete data or request that data be deleted will be part of the class.

Attempt to edit and/or delete a few of your comments at the very least and prepare for the class action lawsuit. It’ll probably take a couple years, but there’s no way that some law firm isn’t already looking into it and gearing up to start the process. There’s a particular law firm that I follow that has gotten some really good settlements from social media companies such as this one against facebook. I would believe that if anyone decides to take on a data privacy issue against a large social media company, it would be them.

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4 points

Seriously…

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8 points

Un-deleting deleted comments is certainly sleazy, but I didn’t realize it was illegal.

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8 points

Under the CCPA you own your data. That data should be deleted under request.

Same thing with the European GPDR

You can request your data too (like on discord)

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2 points

Something similar passed in Texas recently: https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB4/2023

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2 points

Texas, soon to be the next TERF US State after Florida. Why can’t the Federal Congress do the same California did and stop companies from lobbying?

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1 point

Also this guy lives in California and Reddit is based in California sooo… These protections should apply to him

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5 points

It depends. If undeleted comments included your personal data, like IP address, home adress or your real name, it certainly is illegal

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2 points

Is it just me or is there an unethical way to try and entrap reddit here by posting your real name, deleting the post, and seeing what happens?

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2 points

My name is Giovanni Giorgio.

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18 points

I think the only solution currently is to use something like Redact to mass edit your posts and comments to remove the data that you have input into the site. Reddit lives or dies on the information that users post/comment on it.

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3 points

How do you know they don’t keep post revisions too? It’s trivial to implement and probably not much more data.

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2 points

You don’t

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3 points

That’s my point. I doubt altering comments would have any advantage over deleting them. You just hide what you wrote from other peasants but not from Reddit.

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3 points

Does Reddit save edit history?

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7 points

Word is that they don’t, deletes are soft-deletes but edits aren’t so reversible.

In this specific case it looks like it might just be that specific sub being private on the day he deleted, https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/99466/Reddit-violates-CCPA#entry-comment-406442

Watching the video i see him deleting from 11 months ago to 12 years ago. But don’t see the specific 3 year old posts on r/javascript. Which would be consistent with not being able to see them due to the sub being private.

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8 points
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When it was open source, they didn’t. But it’s closed source now. So who knows. Reddit says they don’t, but they have lied before, so who knows.

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1 point

I was able to delete all my posts/comments without issue (My reddit username is different from this one fyi).

As you stated, the subreddit could gave been private. He also may have been viewing a stale cache.

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5 points

Note that redact doesn’t always get everything. https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/46805/Strange-phenomenon-while-deleting-my-comments

But agree with the idea. The best way is to use a tool to mass edit and then mass delete. For example https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/65260/PSA-Here-s-exactly-what-to-do-if-you-hit-the

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2 points

They mentioned shreddit able to delete more using some kind of archive but it’s $15.

Is that the only service to offer that service or are there any free/cheaper options that do the same?

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2 points

You can use the shreddit cli script from github as it has the same option for free.

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6 points

I tried this using the shreddit CLI app, and they reverted my edits as well as deletions.

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4 points

It feels like even that wouldn’t work if they can just restore stuff but I don’t know. Editing the comments before deleting would be a good idea though. If they just restore your stuff the last time it was up then all the comments would be useless.

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24 points

I personally believe that reddit is the type of company to save the orginal post and revert it just out of spite

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10 points

i wouldnt put that sort of crap past a pedophile like Spez

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6 points

This honestly is much worse than twitter, because atleast with twitter, I didnt see them doing this typa shit

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6 points

I personally believe that reddit is the type of company to save the orginal post and revert it just out of spite

They have been reverting them. I’ve been observing it in action my my Reddit account as I delete things. Even old posts that I recall deleting years ago (like random things on r/Hearthstone after I stopped playing Blizzard games) have been making a return over the past month. I’ve been going in and doing batches of edits to my post history every few days, and editing it differently. From ten years ago to now, I’ve had posts re-appearing and the edits getting un-edited.

Wild.

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2 points
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I’ve been going in and doing batches of edits to my post history every few days, and editing it differently. From ten years ago to now, I’ve had posts re-appearing and the edits getting un-edited.

Are you absolutely certain? I just as well might not bother with the mass edit then.

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1 point

They probably do have copies of deleted posts/comments, also copies of the original for edits. I don’t know of a single company that easily allows users to “really” delete something.

Database backups cannot easily be edited, for example.

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