2y ago

Reddit violates CCPA

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.

Reddit @lemmy.world

Reddit may be violating the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

48 4

You're viewing a single thread.

53 comments

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.
- I personally believe that reddit is the type of company to save the orginal post and revert it just out of spite
  
  i wouldnt put that sort of crap past a pedophile like Spez
  
  This honestly is much worse than twitter, because atleast with twitter, I didnt see them doing this typa shit
  
  The difference is that Musk doesn't have the knowledge and skill to do it.
  
  I personally doubt that.
  Musk might not have his own personal knowledge. But this is violating a law in California in which the person in this video seems to in California.
  Plus reddit seems to based in California.
  This goes behind being a scumbag, and into the territory of ignoring the CCPA.
  This is magnitudes worse than simply being a greedy capitalist.
  
  Or have the skill (or desire) to keep the personal that have the knowledge in the company.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  The issue there isn't that Reddit stores the edit history (that would be too much storage space), but that it doesn't apply the edit at all and just pretends to if it you recently edited something else. You need to wait after each edit for your next edit to go through.
  I had success with this Power Delete Suite fork, which waits for 5 seconds after each edit.
  
  Thanks for letting me know, I'll give it a shot when I have time. (And edit results here if I remember.)
  
  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.
- I tried this using the shreddit CLI app, and they reverted my edits as well as deletions.
- 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.
- 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
- How do you know they don't keep post revisions too? It's trivial to implement and probably not much more data.
  
  You don't
  
  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.
  
  That’s the word on the street from former devs who used to work there. It’s actually a sign of how poor in quality their system is that they don’t have a good way to reverse edits, if still true.
- Does Reddit save edit history?
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  https://fedia.io/m/RedditMigration@kbin.social/t/48529/Reddit-violates-CCPA#entry-comment-222428
  
  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.
- 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?
  
  You can use the shreddit cli script from github as it has the same option for free.

53 comments