that doesn't delete your content
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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One could just mass edit all their comments to contain some garbage with power delete suite. Of course they would have to hurry, as that relies on the reddit api for making the edits.
PowerDeleteSuite only gets the comments shown in your profile, which is limited to 1000 comments in each list: New, Top, Hot & Controversial. You need to do a data request which contains CSV files with links to all your comments, then you can feed that into something like shreddit, in order to get everything.
If one was to delete the top 1000 comments, then would the older ones be visible?
I had separate accounts for pretty much every community, so they didn't have too many comments.
No, the list will appear empty.
At least, until reddit restores some of the comments some time later. That's also been happening a few times over.
I wouldn't hurry to delete your account, so that you can supervise this.
Edit: if your accounts have fewer than 1000 comments each then you'd probably see everything on your profile page.
My accounts only had a couple of hundred posts each, so that didn't turn out to be an issue. I haven't yet deleted them, but the edited comments haven't been restored after a week or so.
That's good then. I've had comments popping up in the different lists over time. I either ran PDS again or just manually edited them.
I haven't seen anything restored from the GDPR files I used with shreddit, but then I've only grabbed a handful out of something like 76,000 comments over 12 years.
Yes. For instance using a tool like Redact you can mass delete ALL requests as it simply pulls a new 1000 comments since it deleted the last 1000.
That's not what I've seen. You run PDS, it deletes each 1,000 comment list, then the list appears empty.
Okay? I don't know what PDS is... so I definitely don't run it. I have absolutely deleted more than 1000 items in one go. The app can run delete the first 1k then pull the next 1k automatically in the same singular button press. If you're app isn't doing it, then I would presume it's poorly coded. Here's a screenshot example of me deleting >2000 items in one go.
https://cloud.saik0.com/s/jcXewsLYQRSHXCT/download/Signal_VUIEMCUac4.png
PDS is PowerDeleteSuite, which is the one most people seem to know about.
There are 4 lists on your profile, New, Top, Hot and Controversial. Each of these has a 1,000 comment limit, so while there may be some overlap you can access well over 1,000 comments from your profile.
For me, the easy ones to find that it missed were my replies underneath some of my older top comments. The top comment was deleted, but replies underneath with <50 karma remained. These were too old for New, not popular enough for Hot or Top and not Controversial, so they didn't appear in the lists.
And Redact is not PDS... It missed no items. I'm still completely unsure why you're bringing up something that nobody was talking about nor has any of the deficiencies that you mentioned.
Redact uses the same method, it only gets the comments from your profile. It has the same deficiency.
The only way to get everything is to use GDPR files, or the Pushshift archive of all of reddit, with links to every comment. At least, that's the case if you have a significant number of comments over many years, if your account isn't as big it can be possible that everything will be on the profile.
Edit: the insidious thing about it all is that you can't easily find the comments it misses, not without the links. Reddit lulls you into a false sense of security by showing you a blank profile, letting you think you've got everything.
And yet... I provided evidence that it worked just fine. And even explained how it could be done.
And I explained how that doesn't mean you've got everything. You're still just getting the comments from your profile, not every comment you've ever made.
You're being hostile now, when all I'm doing is explaining it to you.
The app can run delete the first 1k then pull the next 1k automatically in the same singular button press.
As I described 5-6 posts ago.
You claim I'm being hostile... But you're the one droning on and on about a topic that you're clearly not versed on. I've shown you it can be done. And affirmed that I've done it correctly. You're the one that keeps telling me I'm wrong when you have no evidence of it. Wanna talk about hostile? You're the one sticking words in my mouth about a script that wasn't brought up in this thread. You didn't even approach how what I stated couldn't work (because it does work).
Yes, and I explained that it does 1k in New, then 1k in Hot, then Top, then Controversial. In theory, it can get up to 4,000 comments, assuming there are no comments in multiple lists. You got ~2,500.
Maybe that's everything for you, I don't know. However my account was ~76,000 comments and it defintiely missed most of those. I know this because I opened some of my old Top comments before deleting - the script deleted the Top comment, but the replies underneath were left untouched. I've got them now, but I had to use a script that takes GDPR files and scrapes the links from there.
You’re the one sticking words in my mouth about a script that wasn’t brought up in this thread.
Erm, no. You're the one who came in talking about your favourite tool, unprompted. Literally the first comment I replied to, the second one in this thread, was talking about PowerDeleteSuite.
>One could just mass edit all their comments to contain some garbage with power delete suite.
In any case, which tool/script you use doesn't much matter. They all work the same way on the basic level - even shreddit will just use your profile if you don't feed it something else.
PowerDeleteSuite got 1495 of my comments. Double checked from multiple devices while logged out, it definitely worked
Yes, because there will be older comments that aren't in your New list but are in the other lists. However, if you'd saved a link to one of your older Top comments, you'd probably find there are still replies of yours underneath with low but positive karma.
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I'm thinking, instead of mass deleting/mass editing, which would be easily detectable and reversed, manually editing high value comments like tech support or consumer advice.
You don't want to delete your account until you are absolutely certain that your content will remain permanently deleted, as it appears that they are restoring deleted content.
This... My worry is that they will revert my data AFTER the api calls. I'm not keen on deleting thousands of comments by hand. Remember that after the API changes all those tools will become unavailable.
There are some tools that use a script instead of an api call
A tool being a script doesn't mean it's not using API calls. Although I suppose an autoit script could be used to find delete buttons on a screen. Still a pain in the butt rather than just using the API calls.
Clicking the delete button on the website just makes your browser send API calls (albeit maybe a different, private API than other scripts may use)
I deleted all of mine by hand and when I checked the next day some of them had been restored. I deleted the account after that, hopefully they don't restore anything else.
i got my account banned and then i kept sending harassing messages via appeals. the last one was "i hope you have to suck dick for food when reddit goes public and the stock price drops" and next thing i know my permanent ban was removed.
Looks like that was very appealing.
Roflmao, did they really unban you for harassment?
i swear it happened as i said. I already got myself banned from every major subreddit on that account at that point, it had 138k comment karma but yea i talked shit sometimes. then i got banned from a bunch more after i edited all my comments to say fuck /u/spez. i plan to delete the account when the api shuts down today.
This is a horrible idea. Please don't do that. Trust me, you will regret it.
can you elaborate ? not saying you're wrong, just want to understand what you mean.
number go down and spez will be unhappy...
One downside is that you have no control over your content when banned and using new reddit. If you load your profile in new reddit, it shows nothing, regardless of whether you're logged in.
Right now you can go into old reddit and still edit/delete your comments. However it's likely that reddit will kill old reddit on 1 July, if not before long after. After that it will be very difficult for banned users to control their content.
I'm curious why. What are the advantages of having an account banned over deleting or abandoning it?
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Sounds silly and counter-productive.
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