/r/pics employing weaponised bureaucracy in the fight against Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request
Having worked at a company that had a massive influx of GDPR requests we weren’t prepared for, this one could actually cause them some trouble if Reddit don’t have that process properly automated.
They do not have it automated. I put in a request 2 weeks ago and still haven’t heard back.
Yeah same. They might be holding back until the last minute deliberately in some 4D chess move, but like you I think it’s more likely some poor soul is preparing them manually.
That mandatory overtime.
To save everyone from having to type:
Also if you’re feeling extra cantankerous you could try emailing them directly: redditdatarequests@reddit.com
Even though they say you have to use their form, they can’t actually force you to do that: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/individual-rights/right-of-access/how-do-we-recognise-a-subject-access-request-sar/#requirements
Thank you for this.
DONE.
Thanks!
Posting pictures of Jon Oliver does nothing. A German reddit mod told me, that the admins themselves suggested that the German mods should do this kind of protest instead of keeping the sub in NSFW mode 🤡. The NSFW action + blackout was the only thing that actually hurt them.
Making popular subreddits NSFW clearly hurts them, because Reddit has been forcing them to switch it off. They've also been forcing subreddits to reopen if they've been restricted. So those two options aren't really very viable for every sub.
I suspect this one hurts them too because this post is not visible any more unless you go directly to it or via the pics subreddit - despite it being newer and having more votes than other posts in there that are on the homepage and in popular.
If even a quarter of the people that upvoted this post clicked through to the request form they're gonna have tens of thousands of these requests to deal with.
Well, switching to NSFW not only limits their revenue to to their self-declared restriction on advertising in those subs, but - and I think this is more important - those subs go dark for the purpose of reddit's front page. They made the change a couple years ago to exclude all nsfw subs from r/all. There was no need to; r/best was already r/all without the NSFW subs. Any sub that is excluded from r/all is invisible to the eyeballs which pay the bills because that's the default home page.
Exactly. Especially a subreddit whose entire purpose is posting pictures, why would reddit care if all those pictures are of a single celebrity.
Is there even anything that can be done at this point?
overwriting all your posts multiple times before deleting them and walking away so reddit can die seems like a pretty good option right now. I mean we're already talking about this on lemmy instead of reddit so why not? Corporations need to learn the lessons "don't crap where you eat" and "at war with the product users = your business is done, so respect the product users "
This is exactly what I did one week ago when I decided to leave Reddit. They still haven't gotten back to me
This is the same for me! "A message will be sent to your reddit inbox" complete silence. Though the submission message said it could take 30 days or something.
The GDPR states, that request must be completed within a month. In case you're from Europe, you could report reddit to your local authorities if they don't respond within that time frame. A single report won't probably cause a reaction. But several reports from several individuals on the other hand...
Yeah I did this not to just mess with them. I did it cause I'm leaving and I want my data.
Remind me to never run a company (into the ground) and piss off the entire internet 🤣
Edit: Also, done.
Just did it for my 10yr old 150k karma account.
Thanks for posting this over here. I otherwise wouldn't have known this was going on. As I used a mostly lurker account for game day threads I wasn't going to bother with a data request. It's a whole different story if we can inundate them though. Request submitted. o7
I put mine in today.
I did just now as well.
Me and all my alts covering around 10 years have requested 😈
also did my part 🫡
I loaded up Reddit and did my part. For those who still have Reddit accounts, upvote the original to keep it at the top
Kk
Also, remember the threat that Reddit presented to capitalism's status quo around the height of antiwork and GME.
If Reddit falls, it will be on purpose (by the people running/funding Reddit. Same as the 180 of Twitter as a somewhat legitimate forum - Twitter being a key organizing tool during the Arab Spring (with the Saudis being the largest investor in Twitter behind elon of course).
Billionaires do each other favors to keep the class war in balance.
This is an insightful take that I've not seen discussed as much as I think it should be. People like to make fun of billionaires for being apparently stupid, but there's more going on here when the stupid decisions of these billionaires are resulting in directly destroying tools that have become increasingly and specifically used for anticapitalist actions.
Hence also why Meta is so interested in getting in on the fediverse in whatever capacity they can; they want to influence and direct the conversations of the working people in opposition to them, and eventually they'll try to destroy this too.
Don't forget OWS
Exactly, all of it is an attack on the left.
Just did it, fuck 'em.
Makes me wish I wasn't so quick to delete my account.
Methinks you can also do that request for a deleted account? You'd have to do it by email then I guess (redditdatarequests@reddit.com).
You can still do it. Email them! They’ll insist you use their form but keep pushing.
Oh ya? Ok I'll try thanks!
Quite a longer process I think. In the end the only nice thing I got from this whole mess is to discover lemmy. I also suggest everyone to check Mastodon as Twitter alternative. Fk monopolies ✊️
Lemmy is so nice, I almost didn't feel the switch between platforms it's pretty much the same.
It's nice not feeling like there's an algorithm looming over me. I'd browse a sub more than usual one or two times, Reddit blows up my feed with that sub. Sometimes I wouldn't see anything from some other subs unless I made a point to go visit them.
Well, i'm still getting the hang of it, but so far is quite good. Btw I suggest to any Android user the app Jerboa, way better of the alternative I've find in the store 👌
Just put the request, now I only have to wait a geological era to have my data back
They haven't responded to requests from weeks ago when everyone was backing up their content
Is June 30th specifically the best time to do this… so they know why? Or should I just do it now?
Don’t think it matters, but they’ll certainly get a lot today from this post in r/pics, it’s on like 15k votes. Today is probably as good a time as any.
Do it now to give them less time to respond to it
I would be really surprised if it isn't automated. I would think they just delay as long as possible to provide the info back.
You’d be surprised. I’ve worked with some even pretty large companies that just don’t have a good process for this and rely on people doing some semi-manual process to prepare a response. My current employer got swamped with requests unexpectedly and had a hard time dealing with them all.
Interestingly finding them was the hardest part because requests can come in to any part of your business, even via social media: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/individual-rights/right-of-access/how-do-we-recognise-a-subject-access-request-sar/#socialmedia
Not that easy, it's not a simple SQL query: https://gdpr.eu/checklist/
If they give you some data under that framework, then it implicitly means that legally they acknowledge that they have checked all of those boxes. So before they give you the data there are probably lots of "are we incriminating ourselves by giving this guy this piece of data?" questions that they're asking themselves.
it’s not a simple SQL query
shh... some developers in my team would take that as a challenge and cook up a 3000 lines long stored procedure
That's genius! I just did it myself.
I've done this, but how much time is needed to automate it? If it's 1-2 week they can just automate and then process all the past and future requests in buk
Still means that they have a problem to resolve which is a w
Done
You could consider making a data request first and after they respond, make a deletion request when you’d like your account removed. This will use even more resources.
If they do not respond to either the data request or deletion request (or do not fulfil these requests fully), you can make a complaint with your local data protection office or the one Reddit is based in (maybe Ireland?). Make sure you invoke GDPR using the correct language for your request.
Here’s a template letter of how to do so under GDPR. You must request your data or the deletion of you data using the correct legal framework (quoting the correct legislation) and these templates make this easy. Plus they cover more types of data than just your posts and comments.
Whenever I do this with other companies I do a SAR to get a copy of the data, then a RTBF request to get the data removed, then another SAR to see what they retained.
A significant number say they delete your data and then happily send it back to you a coupla months later when you make an SAR. The ICO loves those ones.
That's a great idea, I'll do this too.
Having also worked somewhere that was under GDPR, weaponised bureaucracy like this can really be used to consume staff resources.
Edit: it looks like Reddit have changed their data request form. To make a full GDPR request, with the additional data in the template, you'll need to email your request to Reddit (redditdatarequests@reddit.com).
You can not only request your data, but also request information regarding how your data is processed and also about psudo-anonymised data. These are much harder to automate a response to.
Request submitted
Well my account is not that old, but i did my part.
Done as well
Done!
Awesome idea! Just threw in my request.
I was a redditor for 15 fucking years before they suspended all of my accounts after a mod permabanned me from /politics and I accidentally posted from another account weeks later.
I posted A LOT over those years, from a ton of various accounts. (One of my biggest fears was getting doxxed so I had a bunch of burners and accounts for specific niche interests and such.)
Just requested full data history for all ~10 of my accounts. Fuck reddit.
Done and done!
I did it on all my alts lol.
Kk going hard.
Already nuking my account, and im not in the eu/us region
Can still participate?
Yes 100%. They have an EU presence so this applies to all the data they hold about anyone.
I'm not in either and could still request it: http://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request
I did my part
Quite a longer process I think. In the end the only nice thing I got from this whole mess is to discover lemmy. I also suggest everyone to check Mastodon as Twitter alternative. Fk monopolies ✊️