this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024

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Beleave : A website to help people leave Reddit communities easily (beleave.virock.org)

submitted 7 months ago by virock to c/technology

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi, I needed to leave multiple subreddits but it was a hassle doing so manually one by one. So, I built 'Beleave' to help automate the task. It uses Reddit's API to mass leave subreddits. It's completely free. I didn't even put ads in it.

top 19 comments

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Just fucking delete your Reddit accounts, what is the issue here?? They do not deserve your ad dollars, walk away. The Internet is not this important. Fuck any website that behaves this way, just stop using it. There's literally billions of sites out there.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Because I prefer having my comments written over multiple times (to prevent rolling back) advertising Lemmy, Fedia, Kbin, etc.

Why delete my account when I can have it be a billboard for here?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Because deleting your account doesn't remove your comments...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Correct, it does not, which is why they need to be deleted individually or overwritten.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Even deleting them individually might not be enough at this point (they might be restored from backups).

[–] [email protected] -5 points 7 months ago

Which is what I realized when you said that... Hence my comment

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Huh. Well, there is one other reason as well:

They have apparently revived deleted accounts and puppeted them/gave them away (which honestly just waiting for that shit to happen in EU by accident and them getting sued to hell and back for it), so this way I can keep control

Thanks for that info though. Shame people are downvoting you for sharing that

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Not everyone ~~can~~ wants to, and so not everyone will.

I'm not hating on a tool that might help some people drop the subreddits they no longer care for. People will have different paths for how they improve their digital lives

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes actually everyone can delete their account. They may not want to but they can. Great that this guy made a tool to leave multiple subs but still it's not impossible to stop supporting shit companies. For every sub out there there is a site serving the same interest. This isn't a matter of life or death, it it's like saying you can't leave Netflix because it has shows you like.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I fixed it, but the point still stands.

For some people, dropping subreddits slowly is how they get out of the daily habit and eventually move somewhere better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Fair enough

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Leaving subs shows up as reduced subscribers.

It isn't much, but it still makes the point that they're driving people away visible

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So does deleting your account.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Why not both?

People sometimes need closure.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If you need closure for leaving a website you need that website. Don't leave.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I strongly disagree with this statement. Just because it's hard to do doesn't mean it isn't what you rationally decide you want to do. The reason for staying and the reason for leaving are orthogonal to one another or else there wouldn't be a conflict. Compare to substance addiction: You decide you want to stop, but you need.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I would disagree.

While it seems strange on the surface, what a person needs closure from isn't the site, per se. It's the sense of connection and community.

You are right that leaving a place that gives that shouldn't be abandoned lightly. Where differ is in whether or not the site is what a person is really connected to. Reddit, in particular, is no different than Facebook or Twitter, or any other digital gathering place. If that service can not, or will not, serve to connect people with bare minimum interference, they should be left.

But that leaving is (and I fully expect some grief for this) little different than leaving a church.

Things that give us that sense of connection, community, or even a piece of that feeling, have weight. People tend to accept a lot of bullshit that goes along with a structure that gives us human connection. Much like a church, a social media outlet can become toxic and cause more harm than good. When that happens, leaving is necessary. That departure being necessary does not make it hurt less.

In the case of reddit, or other social media, when you leave you have an echo left behind. That echo is vastly different than the echo left by leaving a church or a hobby club or something like that. The echo you leave at reddit or similar is an echo a company uses for their own gain.

Part of the process of leaving is minimizing that echo as much as possible. The steps involved aren't about practicality. We all know that reddit has copies of what we delete, if they want it. So we also know that closing an account, or unsubbing, or deleting comments doesn't do anything to reddit. It's done so that the individual makes a clean break. It's a necessary closure for the self.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Would you consider making something for deleting past content? I was talking to someone recently about how they want to remove most of the old content, but they want to leave up certain things. That feels somewhat similar to the actions they would take here, so it might be a cool feature to have. Maybe even "see what subreddits I've posted in, and pick what to delete"

Also, would you care to add your Lemmy and other fediverse accounts to your website? ;)

[–] virock 2 points 7 months ago

I don't think I'll be able to any time soon. I'm swamped with work at the moment.