I'm in the process of doing this right now too but I seem to have lost the ability to view comments older than 6 months. Before the API fiasco and the blackouts, I could see all the way back to my first comments/submissions.
Have you noticed that with your account or is it just me?
I remember checking months ago, before this was announced, and noticing I could only go back a few months. I think they snuck in the change just before they started doing all of this.
Wow, if I were on the fence of ever going back to reddit before, this cements that I will never post again on that site. Losing control over your own data? Not being able to delete your own posts and comments? Like what if someones comments contain sensitive information they want to remove? This is beyond disgusting.
More people need to know about this and stop posting any information to reddit immediately.
It would help if they were reverting personal information. You have a right for them to remove any data about yourself. E.g. if I have Reddit my email address and date of birth and real name. Then decided to leave Reddit. They would have to get that data off their servers (or they can't operate in Europe) some companies also need to keep that data in a EU data center not US to keep compliant. just saying "script reverted it" isn't going to save you. Hell we have to be very carefull to wipe it from preprod environment as well (and never store their data in SIt (without irreveesable flipping the personal details)
However the content itself, if cannot be tied back to the person can stay as is. Of course if you have written in your comment "I'm bob Roberts from robertsville and I run bobs grill" that comment has to go so most sites would rather blanket delete. However if you post a guide to grilling that is not personally identifiable then Reddit could keep that data up
just saying "script reverted it" isn't going to save you
I feel like this would actually be worse than someone doing it manually, in terms of GDPR.
I doubt Reddit is ever going to check all these comments manually to see if they do or do not contain personally identifiable data. They have to delete this data. The data also doesn't have to be "hi my name is X and my address is X", it can be anything that could be potentially identifying, on its own or in combination with other identifying data.
I am not entirely sure it is open and shut on gdpr.
If the post contains any personally identifying information then yes it has to go, but if they disconnect your username/account details from the content and the content is not specifically about you then it can stay up. But it is murky grey area.
General Data Protection Right. You as the owner of your content have unviolatable rights including the rights of deletion. These rights superseds reddits draconical terms of service who lets be honest nobody reads anyway because they are stupidly long.
You are not the owner of your content, you are the owner of your personally identifying data. So if tied to you then must go...but if you have written somthing that is not personally identifying then Reddit could keep it
Okay then it wouldn't be protected by GPDR, but instead Copyright Law (since you are always the copyright holder of your own stuff) which can't be diminished by companies terms of usage.
The GDPR states that data is classified as “personal data” an individual can be identified directly or indirectly, using online identifiers such as their name, an identification number, IP addresses, or their location data.
And if these online identifiers give information specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity of that natural person.
In some circumstances, even information related to a person’s job, hair color, or political opinions could be classed as personal data. Usually, this comes down to the context in which the data was collected and whether a data subject could be directly or indirectly identifiable.
So pretty much any significant discourse you have on a platform would be covered under GDPR as an EU citizen. They also have a list of examples on this page too.
Data ceases to be personal when it is made anonymous, and an individual is no longer identifiable. But for data to be truly anonymized, the anonymization must be irreversible.
The website also states that „properly anonymized data“ is not affected by the GDPR.
The only things from that list, that should be posted on a public internet forum, are race, gender and political views anyways. And it isn‘t really possible to identify a single user based on these data points
By submitting content to Reddit you also granted them an irrevocable license to use it (according to their ToS) and Art.17, 3a of the GDPR protects data that is not identifiable from deletion
But I guess it‘s worth a try. Maybe their DPO is a nice guy
How is this going? I started getting serious about this today, and so far it's just been a real exercise in frustration. It seems if you have too many comments, Reddit hides the really old ones, making them quite difficult to locate.
I think shreddit.com is based on someone maintaining and fixing the old python open source shreddit script on github. Both that version and the new rust shreddit support using the GDPR archive files I believe for free, you just have to run it yourself.
The issue is that I may not get my archive file untl after July 1st, at which point I'm worried that these scripts will stop working due to the API changes. Even $15 on shreddt.com may no longer be an option.
Also, according to the github shreddit, when you use GDPR it uses that "instead of reddit APIs", so it will basically be opening the links and editing that way. That should be fine against reddit's API. However I just ran it and it didn't appear to do much..
Ehhhh. It's fuck reddit at this point, but I will just keep it pushing without giving these bad faith actors my energy. It's not worth it to spam the boards imo 🤷🏾♂
It is. Reddit API is going to be used solely for AI training at this point. By turning the conversations into garbage we'll destroy Reddit's value for that task.
they will probably just rollback all your comments, like they did already for a bunch of people. though at least that could cause them to have a problem with GDPR and similar data protection acts.
Though I think if you want to salt the earth you could instead bloat up every comment to max comment length, preferably with a funny story about data protection created in chatgpt. This might increase the server space needed for each comment. Maybe even add some disclaimers and stuff that this comment is your intellectual property and editing it without your knowledge and approval makes the site liable to a fine. This probably doesn't stick up in court, but whatever, maybe some employee will still think twice before changing back your comments.
I think the moment your account is still active, all your comments can be identified as personal data by your username and falls under GDPR for sure. If your account is deleted/banned it is anonymized so it could only fall under GDPR if the comment contains identifyable information. But anonymization must be irreversible, so I think reddit is not allowed to have any data linking your comments to each other after you deleted your account.
Now what if you edit your comments/delete them and delete your account afterwards (which schould anonymize it).
If they restore your former contents, doesn't that mean that they still have an identifier for your data linking the deleted GDPR protected data?
I don't think EU looks too kindly on stuff like that, they can be pretty strict for consumer data protection and using data like this seems pretty against the original intention of the GDPR.
The Reddit TOS can also say all kind of stuff, but it won't stick if it breaks a higher law instance.
Spez is a person with no foresight and a bad CEO, i think reddit is about to fuck around and find out what happens if you ignore the GDPR.
I don't think there has been a case like this before, where a social media so blatantly misuses consumer data. This might become a pretty big thing and hopefully clarify the rights of the users in the future.
They probably have a monitoring tool watching content being edited. Do not make it too easy for the admin to restore your posts. You can use the python script that is posted around to change part of your posts, not all of them in one bunch, fill them with garbage like AI content (not just "deleted").
They have enough time to create these monitoring tools, but they have no time building a sane official app, go figure.
I’m sure it makes it easy when you mention u/Spez in every comment. I think he gets notified. I would just change them to something about why you are leaving and where you are going.
I deleted all my comments yesterday... Now the comments are back today... I live in a GDPR protected country so jokes on them I guess. So shady though.
Nice. However if you would’ve changed them to something less vulgar without failing to convey the message. Reddit wouldn’t have an excuse to delete all your comments. Lets hope the don’t anyway
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