Every support thread on Reddit is literally this now

Just the cost of pissing off all the highly technical users who helped build the place.

Exactly. Just used Redact myself a few weeks ago.
https://github.com/Aryanb1102/Redact-Reddit-Data-Deleter
- I wish I'd done that. I deleted my 12 year old account right before learning about these tools.
- Thanks! Doing this tomorrow

Well, this happens if you don't respect your users.

…or your moderators
\ …or your third party developers
- ...or MY AXE!!
- Fuck the mods; bunch of thin skinned morons.

When Reddit's API debacle happened lots of people moved away. Some deleted their comments, some edited them with a message in protest. But sadly the consequences is that a lot of history and useful information got lost in the process.

I don't know how I feel about this. I understand why it's done and even why it needs to be done, but it still makes me sad considering the amount of times where Reddit saved me from massive headaches with IT stuff and so on...

As someone who deleted their posts... yes. The goal was to make Reddit worse, by removing my contributions to it because they forgot where their value came from.
My content had some small value to them. They didn't deserve it.
- I hope they delete all your stuff when your account gets banned because I’ve left at least three of those in my wake
- I hear these justifications a lot, but the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
  The value of the archival data that can be affected by deleting or editing is almost entirely only user-accessed value. Reddit isn't harmed at all from the edits. It primarily needs active regular users to improve its stock value. Alternatively, it can sell archival data for AI training.
  Editing old comments removes neither value source from Reddit. You moved away from it so deprived it of both the material value of new comments and the statistical value of being an active user. Reddit also assuredly has saved data from before the API issue and can likely spot and clean the mass edits to sell the data from training purposes.
  Conversely, the value to users and society is high. So many solutions to problems that are gone forever. The Internet is decaying already and it gets harder to find useful information, and those leaving decided to just burn down a library of Alexandria.
  It's their - and your - right, sure. They're by definition done on comments the user owns. But this is just punching desperate Internet users in the face hoping it gives Reddit a bloody nose.
Reddit undeleted a lot of the content removed during the API debacle. This comment must have been after that because you can see the latest comment is post API changes.
- That's why I didn't close my account and still do a new turn of mass edits every 2-3 months. I have nothing deleted, just constantly overwritten. I get regularly banned from some subreddits after each wave, probably because some comments may trigger some sort of spam detection and edits alert the mods then.
The sad part of it is that they (reddit) can still access that deleleted information and sell it for AI training. Even as a "power" user you can use websites that "undelete" that content. The only ones truly affected by this are people randomly browsing reddit.
- I mean it does reduce the value of the content that users created on reddit if a ton of random comments were deleted in protest. Every time you hit a thread like the OOP it reduces reddit 's value to the individual, and in aggregate it reduces reddits value
Yup, Reddit fucked us all after we gave them our knowledge for free.
Trick people into thinking they're contributing to a commons, steal the contributions and run. Very understandable that many people decided to retaliate after the betrayal.
I really hope decentralized knowledge bases take off. Aggregating niche knowledge from experts and non-experts everywhere the internet touches is such a valuable proposition!
I had like one useful comment posted to Reddit. I've left it up, and once every few months I get a comment being appreciative for the info.
Reddit gets the traffic because of Google indexing the original post of a user with the problem. People are going to visit it regardless of whether they'll find the answer or not. In fact, if they don't find it, they're more likely to keep browsing posts in the hope of finding something.
This is the thing with proprietary platforms. They can do anything with our data and no one can do a thing about it. It's just a matter of time and all content in the big tech social networks will become just memories from past users. At least with the fediverse, independent parts can freely archive the content (sometimes it can be a bad thing, but well, nothing is perfect)

I get that it's annoying, but reddit deserves to burn.

Reddit as a company is 100% unaffected by this
- To an extent they are. Part of the appeal of Reddit was that you could find good answers there. But yeah, the idea that "long term their reputation may suffer" is hardly affecting them in any demonstrable way now.
- 100% unaffected? It makes their data worth a lot less for AI training. Even if they keep comment history, these are edits - how do you determine which edit to use? Using all of them poisons the data, and picking one risks doing the same.
  On top of that, reddit has quickly become a non-source for opinions... I used to append "reddit" to any search where I wanted candid feedback, but absolutely would never do that these days. That's less traffic, which is less ad money, which comprises the vast majority of their revenue. Reputation is virtually the only thing that matters for search, and Reddit's reputation has been sliding for years.
- Sure, but the users are.

good, but it's not enough

Good! The users add all the value to that site, moderate if for free and they couldn't even not be cunts about it.

they want propaganda bots mostly now on reddit.
Good for whom?
There's been loads of times where I've looked everywhere for a solution, finally finding it on google page 10+ in an obscure reddit thread with like 10 votes and 4 comments where someone had found a weird, illogical solution to your exact problem, that actually worked.
It's a shame it went to shit. The real losers are us, we lost a lot of knowledge.
- That doesn't mean I think they should get to keep that stuff. Sure, we lost a lot of knowledge there, and that sucks. But the company lost out and pushed their IPO way back for it and I enjoy seeing Spez suffer after what he did to Aaron's legacy.

The comment says removed, but the user says deleted.

And because of the large number of people who not only left Reddit, but burnt bridges in doing so by using tools to delete or garble their entite post history, it's hard to tell if this was Reddit's doing or just that of a fed-up user who deleted their own posts when leaving the site.

it’s hard to tell if this was Reddit’s doing or just that of a fed-up user who deleted their own posts when leaving
The latter, Reddit doesn't remove your comments and posts when your account gets deleted.
- I used a tool to overwrite mine right before the API bullshit went into effect, but searching for my account, it appears they were all restored.
- The former is data they can index for Google searches to make Reddit more valuable as a resource. Reddit will never remove your data.
- yea it doesnt, unless you were shadowbanned. if you got permabanned or delted your account your history isnt gone. shadowban however gets all posts hidden by other users, except yourself.
tools to delete or garble their entite post history
I had a 6 year account when the API scandal hit. Paid a small fee to deny reddit whatever 2 cents my comments are worth.
- 13 years for me. I killed so much content.
reddit comments only say removed when the mods or admins remove it. maybe the dude used a script to make all his comments say "I hate Reddit I am going to mail a pipebomb to carlos mencia in retaliation" and reddit nuked them.
- What's wrong with doing that?
a fed-up user who deleted their own posts when leaving the site.
9 times out of 10 that is also Reddit's doing.

I did the same.

Reddit showed it didn't give a fsck about my user experience with their banning of third party apps, but they still wanted to sell the content I put the effort in to providing.

Screw you guys. You want to make money off hosting my words, whatever. But don't stick a pineapple up my arse at the same time and expect me not to feel it.

I still use old reddit and I have an extension on iOS that modifies it to be usable on a phone. However, if old Reddit ends up getting the axe then I’m done for good.

Thanks for getting me to finally run one of these scripts to scramble and delete everything in my old account. Fuck every American corporation and their user experience.

They restored all my comments a few months later, so I've tried it again by editing all my comments to gibberish.
- I keep checking mine, no reverse yet. Been a few months, 2 since my last purge
  https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite

Thanks, SPEZ!

Fuck that pedophile wannabe.
- Don't forget racist, too!

I really need to go back and delete all my posts, I just dropped it and never went back.

https://jakekrajewski.medium.com/how-do-delete-all-your-reddit-comments-with-a-simple-console-script-bc547b6ba031
It's a pain in the ass to do it manually. I used this script and it helped a lot.
- just say something that will you get you banned and they will delete all your comments and posts and your profile. they will appear as [deleted]. much easier tbh
Does that help the fight? I was under the impression that they got to keep all the old info
- They do, but it makes the site less useable for people, which is a win
- What I did was mass edit all my comments. According to reddit customer support (about a year ago at the time), they do not retain old versions of edited comments.
I used Redact a while back. Super easy. First replaced everything with filler text, then deleted. Just in case mods have auto-rollback for deletion.
You‘re harming people looking for help and support more than you harm Reddit.
- And Reddit took people's goodwill to give free advice their and generate revenue from it for granted.
- Which harms Reddit more than anything, as people will look elsewhere.
- Reddit already only allows Google to scrape them now, so as far as I am concerned it is a dead site. Removing my comments is worth it to not feed the monopoly that is Google.

Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.

Well said, I fully support it. Let's hope at least this place doesn't turn into 1984 like others.
What a spezhole

Yeah.. I did this too when leaving. Made a small app to edit and delete every comment I made. I actually had a useful IT related self hosting post which was also nuked. I guess that's the price the whole community had to pay for reddits thirst for profit.

Although, long ago, I heard of a rumor; all of reddit was frequently backed up and available for download. Is that still a thing? Was it ever a thing?

Can you post your app on GitHub? Many of us would love it. (Especially now if I ever need to visit the US I would have to delete all my JD Vance couch fucker comments)
- Someone in this thread posted a similar thing that's probably better. When I left, there wasn't anything like it so I had to cobble something together.
I heard of a rumor; all of reddit was frequently backed up and available for download
I don't know about "available for download" (probably not), but: modern websites tend to have their content stored in a database, and databases are (or should be) regularly backed up to tape drive or optical disks or whatever. This means, fundamentally, that everything ever posted to a social media site like reddit or facebook will be in existence permanently, regardless of what efforts users take to subsequently delete their history from the current instance of the database.
The only way to truly "delete your data" would be to re-mount each old backup and delete the data in each of them before re-backing them up (or else destroying all the backups). No social media site does this or even could do this. Furthermore, when it comes to keeping your comment history out of the clutches of AI, I would almost guarantee that when a site like reddit sells its data to companies to train the AI on, they are selling old backups from before users started mass-deleting their posts.
There was pushshift, but it's locked down since the API thing, there's pullpush.io, but that seems down atm. Also there is reveddit. I think most or all of these do not store content that has been deleted by the user though.

I wish I'd deleted all my comments and posts before deleting my account.

Don't forget they're also selling all your freely provided content to AI scrapers as well. Fuck Reddit.

I wonder what happens to your account when you get banned
- Believe it or not, straight to the AI farm.
- From what I can tell, it continues to exist, but you can no longer post. They're not gonna just give up all that free data.
They will just put them back. Your stuff isn't really deleted.

I made sure to remove all my posts before i left when they started blocking anonymous vpn users. 3 accounts across 15+ years all gone because of their stupid policies.

Good.

They went public and made bank on free user input. Those users rebelled so the platform would suck.

It may still be standing but I feel we won over a year ago.

stackoverflow be like

"hey i have this problem and i can't figure it out"

posted 10 years ago

"nevermind i figured out it so all is good"

posted 10 years ago

Even worse is: "Here's a link to where I found the solution"
404

https://xkcd.com/979/

They just added comment history hiding as well, so now you can’t even tell if some people are engaging in good faith anymore.

So I get banned for reporting trolls because it's an "Abuse of the Report Button" AND they make it easier to Troll? Do they just want people not using the site?
- @QueenHawlSera @nightlily pretty sure that you just have to consider reddit as having been very much broken for a number of years now.
  They erroneously ban good users and encourage the trolls.
  The only way the experience is bearable is just to block idiots yourself and not engage.
you cant tell if people are botting/spamming

WTF? View removed comment?

Welcome to "soft delete", where database entries are marked with a "deleted" flag instead of being actually deleted. Makes it trivial to restore things a user has "deleted". Actually, even without soft deletes, modern databases maintain an audit trail which tracks all changes made anywhere, which also makes it easy to restore "deleted" items. And actually actually, databases are regularly backed up and when a user "deletes" their data the sites don't go into the backups and delete the data there, so everything anyone posts is technically in existence forever (not really because because backups won't last forever but they can last a very long time).
I'm sure that when reddit sells its data to companies to train their AI on, they're selling backups from before users started mass-deleting their histories.
It's for alternate Reddit front-ends and rarely ever works.
This must be new.

Awesome!!! Post your questions here instead

What kind of a boy is spez?
- The fascist kind. A lot of high karma accounts got banned for no reason this last year. Destroying their own creation. Sad.
- A reliable source tells me Spez likes to diddle kids and has a micropenis.
- A greedy little piggy boy
Why? so it can be found in search engines when people are looking for answers? Sadly, Lemmy is terrible for searching for answers. Lemmy will likely never replace the true benefits of reddit, search engine indexing for solutions.
- Who cares about the search engines? Ask your questions here and get an answer. It just takes longer

Fuck Spez!

I wish we were at the point where its applicable to every support question. fuck reddit. the company. not the knowledge base provided by its users.

I love that people are removing the solutions, but keeping the “holy shit you just saved me 2-3 full quarters of work”

That's because the person who had the solution removed their comment history, but the person who said thank you didn't.
- is this alt text

How would I go about doing this? I want to nuke all my comments since I know deleting my account won't

Edited with Power Delete Suite - https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
I do this every few months, scans the page, makes the changes. You can see with my account https://old.reddit.com/u/thermal_shock
Been about a month, will probably run it this weekend. Surprising I've only been blocked in some subs, no ban even though I said they all the billionaires should be killed lol
- Thank you for the links, I think I will try the power delete suite you linked! I might do the same and just edit all my comments to be something like that before I log out for the last time. Sick of that website tbh.
There were tools to do it for your... but after the massive migration they blocked a ton (part of the API block that drove everyone away)
- The API is still available in dev mode, just obtain the client ID and secret to authenticate the app. I used shreddit this way, it was more thorough than PowerDeleteSuite when I gave it the GDPR checkout. Both tools produce a log so you can refer to the posts/comments later.
if you google how to do this, you can find some threads, i used a github library that did it pretty easily with a step by step walk through, some let you edit it and fill with quotes or advertising or whatever.
- I will look into this, ty!
I personally manually overwrite my comments every few months. Be aware, though, that you can see only the last 1000 comments in your history, so you'd better do it frequently if you are very active. I haven't seen any of my comments ever restored, unlike what I hear from people who use automated tools.

fear apparatus rob nutty unique panicky fearless lip adjoining sophisticated

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

Use bad words like sex, porn, diversity, gay, for maximum effect.
- DEI, trans, equal rights, tump fucked kids.

It's annoying, but it had to be done.

Remember, the capitalization of resources like this is a planned attack against the lower, middle, working class from uniting against the elite and capitalistic agenda. Reddit was a sharing of knowledge, and the control of knowledge, to the elite, should be solely within their control, and the sharing of knowledge to the aforementioned working class groups is a direct assault on their power.

That’s why they bought Reddit out and sunk it.

It’s not just ‘Fuck Spez!’, sure he caved and monetized Reddit, but his actions were just a symptom of the wider issue; capitalism is another tool designed by the elite to subjugate the working class.

I did my part to protest Reddit's awful policies by nuking everything I'd ever posted to deny their ability to give it platform. Less information = site less useful.

A drop in the ocean really, but a lot of people did the same which the Reddit admins did take notice of. Not that spez cared anyway because he's a cunt.

I like seeing blank comments on there now. It's often a sign of somebody else who got fed up with Reddit's bullshit.

reddit is quickly making itself irrelevant.

who knew extreme censorship would be bad for the exchange of information??

This actually isn't necessarily censorship. This is more likely users deleting their comments when moving away from Reddit to... Surprise! Lemmy.
Back during the big move people made a lot of scripts and apps to do that for them and my unpopular opinion is that its been not a good thing to do. Unless they archive their answers somewhere else it is lost knowledge. I know I am pretty alone with that view so please don't start a discussion again, I won't reply.
- Yeah, I get so pissed when people nuke their comment history. Why do that when you don't have too much of personal revealing information in that post or comment? Even one of the mods of AskHistorians expressed frustration of insightful posts and comments being deleted by OP. I did not even delete any of my posts before I deleted my Reddit account, because there are no revealing information, and I know some of my posts and comments will be helpful for others.
- And why do a lot of leave reddit and join lemmy? For me I got tired of getting banned and having my comments deleted all the time aka censorship. I've nuked my comment history out of spite at least five times after bans.
Don't look at what's been happening with the stock price.
- I'm trying to get the image of spez wanking to that price graph out of my head.
censorship and being censured as well.
When Twitter went downhill, we got bluesky and mastodon. Bluesky works as a decent Twitter replacement and Mastodon is smaller and more fediverse-focused. Lemmy and Piefed are alternatives to Reddit but I wouldnt really say that Lemmy fully replaces Reddits functionality in terms of niche subs. That's why I've always been in favor of explosive growth here with each Reddit exodus, to have a forum within an order of magnitude or two of the size of Reddit to properly become a replacement.

I have to say I was having issues using reddit on my browser, it was a simple html issue where I couldn't break paragraphs, and I went to the support sub and they fixed it within 2 days.

I've had mods ban me for visiting, not commenting or posting, just viewing a post from another sub. I'm sure I got shadow banned plenty of times. I left because of the users. I disagreed that someone should Go No Contact with their dementia suffering grandpa for being racist and I felt like I was going crazy with the commenters who tore me a new one.

I stayed for while after because fuck, I'd been on reddit since it had r/all and not much else. I blocked out the one that got me to quit for good. I don't even want to check back in for curiosities sake because fuck them. I wasn't wrong in the slightest.

And after that you chose Lemmy of all places? No offense, but the people and especially the mods here are even more batshit crazy when it comes to anything even remotely considered not left. 😂
I got banned from PoliticalMemes for saying that Hamas are a terrorist organization. Someone else got banned from the entirety of Blahaj.zone for saying that dragons aren't real. The list goes on. Reddit is centralist heaven compared to Lemmy! Heck, some of the mods are openly Putin and Winney Poo fan tankies!
That being said, there's still a lot of cool people and communities here that are pretty nice. Just stay away from anything even remotely political if you're not a downright communist/tankie. 🫣
Edit: The downvotes and comments below are once again proofing my point.
Edit2: Seems like I got myself another social stalker with this comment - CakeLova556@feddit.org
- Reddit is centralist heaven compared to Lemmy!
  Reddit used to be a utopia like Lemmy before all the dipshits showed up. It was very left-leaning, and there's a reason /r/atheism was so prominent.
- Someone else got banned from the entirety of Blahaj.zone for saying that dragons aren't real.
  There's joke subs (i know of r/switzerlandisnotreal) with respective rules.
  And i've not seen much right-leaning comments on c/all.

Don't forget the random comments in other languages because people are not aware of reddit's shitty auto-translate feature when you come from a google search.

Are there any tools that can edit your comments to make the ingestion of your data into ai models less worthwhile? Eg. The comments are edited to not be random, superficially look like a human made them, but have very little value when sold by reddit

I forget the tool but every once in a while you'll see a comment of gibberish words and it says "comment removed thanks to X".
The service edits the comments instead of erasing them.

Good. Separately, I really wish we had a way to search for useful answers on Lemmy. I feel like much of the reddit was exposed through: "question/key words" site: reddit.com googling

I mean, you can do pretty much that by using one of the largest instances. That is most likely to have content from the largest amount of other instances.
- I get what you're saying it's just not as practical. Many won't look for the largest/most relevant instance for their questions.
- Lemmy doesn’t even have a fraction of the useful information you could find on Reddit across lots of topics.

I know I deleted all my posts from multiple accounts before coming here.

Good, fuck reddit, anybody with an account should delete all comment history.

I provided quite a few answers in Linux, UNIX, and programming forums. I had to delete my comments multiple times as they kept getting restored. I even had a script that I'd run in my browser that would go through and delete all my posts until a month passed with no restorations, then deleted my account. Reddit should never be a Google result for tech help to begin with. It should take you to documentation.
- yeah when I left I deleted everything. When I was talking about it to a friend who uses it, and knows my account, informed me that all my interactions with them are still there. Took a look, and yeah, everything restored.

'23 is late enough, but it should be peppered with comments overwritten by 60 random words, just to make it worse

For the record some of my deleted posts got reposted/reset by Reddit. I could see my old comments in a few sybs that absolutely purged as I left.

How is it possible to view deleted comments?

Redlib (alternative front-end to Reddit) puts a link to undelete for removed comments. undelete.pullpush.io
- I didn't mean to ask how one can view the comments. I meant to ask how it's possible at all in the first place.

Good

Oh my God, are you still sitting on this Orwellian platform?

- I don't fully understand you but this seems like a truly great loss.

Remember to occasionally search for "site:reddit.com [your username]".

I did this and found this.
MemeReserveBot couldn't reserve shit, lol.

Whoa since when can you view removed comments?

libreddit instance allows you to do that. one I'm using right now: https://discuss.whatever.social/
note that you have to kinda bounce around from instance to instance as some will be great for a couple weeks then go away or crash and then you have to find another one.

Yea, this kind of problem is only going to get worse I expect.

I set up self-hosted linkwarden the other day to try to avoid this going forward.

- Oh god it's happening here too
- Yea I have libredirect running to show me reddit stuff on alt front ends should I click a link that usually goes to it, but when talking about linkwarden I meant to make it in reference to preventing link-rot for anything in general on any site in the future as well, not just reddit.

… so now they’re linking to the deleted comments? Lol I guess they do need the users…

No that's a redlib thing

Since apparently people still don't know this, it is unlikely that reddit has been restoring deleted posts & comments. Historically, there was a limit to how much could appear on a user's profile and even deleting stuff to back below the limit would not restore the visibility of items already pushed off.

They did relatively recently change this though so if you still have access to your account you can see and nuke the rest (although with the api lockdown and rate limiting shit nowadays it's not as quick & simple).

Another reason this how idea got started was during the api fiasco, a fuckload of subs went private so anything in said subs did not show on profiles during that time. As mods capitulated or were removed, subs went public again and hidden content showed back up; people who nuked their accounts, via user profile pages, in this period assumed reddit was restoring their deleted stuff.

lol, yeah. Ain't it funny?

good

Is this post better suited for c/mildlyinfuriating or c/fuckingawesome?

I know it's great that Reddit is getting less useful but it's still infuriating that I can't find any help on very specific issues where the only answer was that one deleted comment/post.
- Oh yeah, I sympathize with that problem. I have no sympathy for Reddit though. We all should have invested our time in something that had the users' best interests in mind. Something like the fediverse.

I'm unfamiliar with Reddit because I haven't had an account, but can people delete their account on Reddit, and does that automatically delete all their stuff too?

No, you have to individually overwrite all your comments and then delete them to actually make them disappear. Even after all that workl some people have reported their comments returning.
Just checked my account and despite overwriting all my comments before deleting them...yeah, they're all back now.
- and this is why when I delete my comments on lemmy I edit them.
no it doesnt, you have to use an extension or a script to delete it. only shadowbanning prevents another users from viewing, but reddit still has access to it.

cool words very random ass nonsense this makes sense no kill alive

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact.

I dont think its the same cause but I was looking for pressure washer recs a few days ago and came across a few reddit posts that had entire chains of comments from different individuals and every single one had been deleted. One of the posts wasn't even that old (pre API change or anything like that). It was definitely odd to see.

🤷

Try AI tbh. It's saved me from tons of forum posts in pursuit of specialized technical knowledge, where I'd often be lucky to get a response at all.

You have downvotes because lemmy hates LLMs so much. It doesn't reflect reality or the general population. I'm not even critical of the hate, its the communities consensus.
- Are LLMs good or just everything else is so enshitified that they look good in comparison?
- Purity test not found. It's a tool, it is useful to me and saves me time and trouble.

I just use ChatGPT.

May as well burn the planet while you're being lied to, sure