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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Apparently, this was not actually Reddit restoring the comments, but rather privated subs being made public and therefore giving the illusion that reddit had restored everything on their account. Though it is dumb that you cannot access or delete content that you made on a sub that is private.
It doesn't show that Reddit owns you. It shows that we can majorly stick it to Reddit by reporting them to the appropriate agencies. A GDPR violation fine will hurt them badly
You retain any ownership rights you have in Your Content
So you could try to use that argument to get what you want.
The agreement also continues to say you grant them a license to use this content which can not be taken away. But I would argue that if you decide to remove your content then there is nothing to license away. In other words the license is still there but the content is gone.
Of course that’s just my personal interpretation. Law is a fucked up thing that doesn’t follow any logic. If you’re lucky your country/state might have laws that work in your favour.
Will this realistically go anywhere? I have a strange feeling that this’ll just get swept under the rug. I hope it doesn’t turn out like that. Ideally, I’ll like to see some charges/legal proceedings brought up right ahead of their IPO.
Will this realistically go anywhere? I have a strange feeling that this’ll just get swept under the rug. I hope it doesn’t turn out like that. Ideally, I’ll like to see some charges dropped right ahead of their IPO.
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.
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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