this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024

134 points (93.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27283 readers

1630 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

134

How do I delete/overwrite my reddit posts without paying $20 for shreddit? (reddthat.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/asklemmy

58 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've always meant to do this, but after hearing about the AI thing I want to get it done. Is there no free solution? I have too much history to clear manually.

EDIT: PowerDeleteSuite did the trick, thanks!

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 52 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I used Power Delete Suite about a month or so ago, it's foss and it worked great.

I set it to delete each comment, but in case Reddit tries to "roll back" my deletes I also set it to manually edit and save every comment to something (ex. "comment removed"), before doing the delete. It took a good hour to get through all my comments.

I also decided not to delete my 15yo account. My logic here was perhaps that will be a protection from Reddit resurrecting my comments or account in some way, since it's still an active account. It just sits there empty now.

[–] FenrirIII 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I deleted my ancient accounts a while ago. Let them have my random comments and snide jokes. Any LLM trained against my account would get decommed quickly

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

I’m fairly certain they have a backup of their DB before they made the 3rd party API announcement. It’s only a year old a fairly “unfucked” with that they could easily train an LLM off of that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Unfortunately, they still have your comments saved in a database somewhere for LLMs to work on.

Why are we calling them AI when they aren't? Why is AGI now what we've been calling AI all this time? Is it all just marketing and did "news" outlets just go with it because it was easier?

[–] june 12 points 10 months ago (5 children)

It’s because language evolves. LLMs aren’t the traditional AI, but we’ve been referring to things like NPCs in video games as AI and all sorts of other decision making trees as AI for so long that we’ve muddied the waters as to the term’s meaning that we needed to get specific with AGI to denote that it would be something different.

It annoys me too, but better to get on board than rail against the current of the ocean.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

If it's intelligent and it's artificial, it's AI. That's not even a definition that's just how adjectives and nouns work.

We bent the definition quite a bit when we waited to apply them only to systems controlling person-like models. We could have put the term on thermostats and automatic transmissions.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] Feathercrown 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As someone who studied CS and has followed the field of AI for a long time, you have it backwards. Machine Learning and GPTs like ChatGPT have always fallen under the umbrella of AI. Using "AI" to refer exclusively to AGI is a new trend.

To be a bit combatative here, in my opinion this new definition of "AI" that some people insist on using is either repeated by people who don't understand the history of the terms, or intentionally spread to mislead people by others who want to win an argument by redefining terms.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I'll keep repeating this until someone answers it: name one task an AGI can do with text input and text output, that an LLM can't do.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] Sludgehammer 3 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately, they still have your comments saved in a database somewhere for LLMs to work on.

Hmm...I bet they use the text from edits as training data too. Maybe you could poison the results by hooking a edit bot to a random text generator?

[–] Krudler 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The short answer is you really can't.

Reddit Admins and developers have gone on the record multiple times over the last decade and then some, detailing how they specifically save every comment and every edited version.

Replacing your comments with a single SPACE or deleting them does nothing. At least insofar as you frustrating their attempts to sell your comment data.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (5 children)

True, but I don't have to leave my content on the site and searchable to their benefit.

[–] Krudler 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm sorry to break it to you but there's no hope.

Reddit admins have gone on the record recently saying that the content from deleted accounts will just be restored at their whim.

You have no chance to survive make your time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If I overwrite or delete the comments, other users won't see them. So I won't be feeding reddit ad traffic with all the content I created for them.

Perhaps they will decide to unedit and undelete my comments, and sure I won't be able to do anything about that. But I want to at the very least make them put in that effort, if not successfully remove my comments from view.

[–] Krudler 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm glad you feel satisfied, I really am.

I'm not invested in this conversation to break you down or tell you you made the wrong choice.

I just think it's much better for people to live in the reality of the situation. And the reality of the situation dictates a few things:

Any effort to remove your comments in a permanent way from Reddit servers is not happening, and the technical reasons have been described; effort to prevent the sale of your comments in this manner is fruitless.
Reddit leadership, administrators and developers have gone on the record saying that they simply restore deleted comments and those from deleted account at their sole whim and discretion.

The natural conclusion is to accept that you got burned by Reddit, and if you don't want to contribute to them anymore, the only method to do so is by not participating in their app or site. You cannot retract your past participation and people need to understand this. Every time the discussion comes up about deleting one's comments and account, it should be clearly pointed out by informed individuals that it will not achieve the desired objectives.

I really think it is better to describe how hopeless it is, so people get an understanding of some of the more sinister motives and machinations Reddit has.

[–] Alpha71 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That doesn't work. I went in and manually deleted EVERY. SINGLE. POST. I had on a banned account. I checked back later and they were all still up.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm sorry to spoil this to you guys but reddit most likely doesn't actually delete content when you delete it, it just marks it as deleted and hides it from view

[–] KneeTitts 2 points 10 months ago

"hides"

[–] johannesvanderwhales 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not sure about that. That might be a GDPR violation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They probably actually delete it if you request them to from a country covered by GDPR, but not if you just hit the delete button on your post. This is fairly common.

[–] icedterminal 1 points 10 months ago

Reddit has already clarified, your account is deleted, but any comments or posts made are left behind unless you remove them manually. The username is removed on each comment and post. The database doesn't know who it belongs to if you delete your account before doing this. That being said, reddit only tracks the last 1,000 comments you have made. You have to go back and find any additional comments beyond that. Same goes for all other content such as your posts, saved posts from others, comments you upvoted, etc. The internal limit is 1,000. Additionally, the database keeps one revision. So even if you delete it, an admin can restore it if they so desire. The username will be missing of course. The delete counts as a revision state. You first edit your comment with something random, wait 24 hours, and then delete it. If an admin attempts to restore your comment, it will simply be whatever gibberish you put in.

As a result of all this, Reddit is not 100% GDPR compliant.

[–] HootinNHollerin 16 points 10 months ago

Power delete suite

[–] olutukko 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Cant you just send reddit an email and tell yoi want eveything they have about you deleted? Or is that just eu gdpr thing

[–] HootinNHollerin 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can for California too

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Despair 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure if just deleting/GDPR an account is enough to get all of their comments removed.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's supposed to.

A collection of personal opinions are enough to create a personal profile, and are thus protected by GDPR for EU citizens who can withdraw consent for them to be used.

It is also not actually legal for them to change the usage of your protected data before informing you in a clear and concise language, but that part hasn't been thoroughly litigated yet.

[–] Krafting 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yep, yet discord doesn't delete messages nor does reddit with comments, they just "anonymise" it, US companies just doesn't care. Those dumbasses

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Irreversibly anonymizing data would no longer make it personal data according to the current GDPR regulations

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] xkforce 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It is too late. They have your data and arent going to brainlessly overwrite it with gibberish just because you used a shredder. They're not brain damaged.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

If I overwrite or delete the comments, other users won't see them. So I won't be feeding reddit ad traffic with all the content I created for them.

[–] Buddahriffic 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If I was a Reddit admin and wanted to highlight the more interesting posts/comments on a private backend, one of the strategies I'd use is to highlight every deleted post and especially highlight any edited post where the edit doesn't include most of the original comment. It would just be a part of the delete/edit procedure on the SQL server, which means it can even be transparent to most of the devs if the stored procedure code isn't visible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I can't believe they're only charging $60m for this. The content of all the reddit discussions ever is worth so much more money.

[–] LifeOfChance 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I really hope you find something but I'd like to just add my own personal experience. I forget the pluggin I used but it rewrote everything and then deleted it. I searched shortly after for something I had posted and something I commented and was able to find them through Google. Clicked the link and it highlighted my comment and if I clicked my username it did say [DELETED]. Recently I rechecked my account and all of my content was restored.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That's fucked up. So they just detected the deletion and filled it back in from a backup or previous version.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] Krafting 9 points 10 months ago

https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit

Ive use this and it works great

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Wait, if I delete my reddit account, do my comments still exist?

I've forgotten how reddit works since last summer

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

Your comments will still exist even if you delete your account. Your username will just show "deleted" but the comment still exists. You need to edit or manually delete the comments if you want them removed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yep. Do you remember seeing comments/posts where the username is listed as [deleted]?

If you haven’t deleted your account yet, you can edit your posts to be blank/spam, then delete your account. If you deleted your account it’s too late to edit your comments.

That being said, if reddit is concerned with keeping old comments to sell for AI training, I’m not sure this will stop them. This will stop other visitors to reddit from reading what you wrote, though.

I didn’t need to do this (I rarely posted) so I have no recommendation for tools to help, sorry.

[–] xantoxis 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes, unless they've recently changed something. Folks will see something like [deleted] for your username, but the text is still there. And indexable by exploitative AI companies. And indexable by exploitative ad companies.

Worse, you, having deleted your account, no longer control those posts and comments and can no longer affect their fate.