Worth noting is that a number of US states also have strong protection laws. So, delete you comments manually and then, if you're really trying to ensure that they delete your data, submit a data removal request that cites your locale's law on data removal.

Theeeeeen in 6 months or so, send a data retrieval request to make sure they followed through... and report them if they did not comply. Might as well make them pay for that data if they can't follow the rules.

This could be worse than anything else they've done. If they claim they own the data, are they then not responsible for it like newspapers? Is it in their terms and conditions they are free to do whatever with posted information, do they have the rights to edit users comments but in doing so become a content provider and therefore responsible. Kicking mods out doesn't land you in court this seems high risk to be manipulating content. Doesn't matter why it was deleted or edited it was deleted or edited who gets to decide what version to restore. Either you are hands off or you own the data and are responsible for it and upheld to media standards.

Edit: found a snippit of the terms and conditions in a German GDPR thread, It appears it is their terms and conditions that after you post it they can do with it what they like, even adapt it. Either way that's not a reason to be gone.

This is shitty of them to do but this is what people have been trying to tell us since the dawn of the internet. Nothing on the internet is EVER truly deleted

That is such a shitty move. Forcing subreddits to go back up is one thing, but as a european this feels very wrong from a data ownership standpoint and I'm not sure it's ok in the GDPR rules?

Earlier this week I deleted all of my comments except for some in a private sub. I just checked and all the posts I deleted are back 🤬

They really want to fuck around GDPR? Are they really Musk level morons?

There's certainly no chance this will backfire...

That's awful. I wonder if there's a way to automate deleting all of our posts and replies—and repeatedly run it on a schedule via a cron job or something, maybe once an hour or something. And let it run until their API becomes locked down.

That's beyond fucked up.

But also very predictable.

I think it's safe to say this fiasco isn't going anywhere without a class action lawsuit or something.

I used Redact to schedule a daily deletion of my comments and posts. Hope it works. Also, I will report it.

Wow, out of everything that’s happened involving Reddit over the past few weeks, this to me is the most damning and deserves the most attention.

I’m really curious to see how they try to spin this in the next PR piece and what the reactions will be.

Would this actually be a GDPR breach? I was thinking about the right to erasure/to be forgotten earlier in relation to a post I saw about how your posts aren't deleted on other federated instances, if you delete them on your home server. But I figured it wasn't applicable because it's not personal data and I'm thinking the same about this Reddit issue. Can anyone set me straight?

I believe this is illegal for European (under GDPR).

Thats messed up! fuck spez!

Motherfucker! I just checked my profile, and they DID restore the posts I edited+deleted with PowerDeleteSuite. Thankfully it's just the posts from the past week or so, I had deleted my entire 8 year history before that, and that stayed deleted. I'm assuming they monitored other API access calls past the days where the blackout started to restore those.

I deleted all my content but I did it over the span of a few days, to let the different caches around reddit to update with the new void, and my content is still deleted (so far).

I said it before and I say it again: if you have the patience to do so then make sure you overwrite your content with chatgpt generated content, as the future AI that will feed on your post HATE feeding on already AI generated stuff. It makes the AI diverge.

edit: Filling your previous content with random generated content also make it harder to restore because it is harder to spot, compared with the comments which are simply "deleted". Also, if all of it is really true, congratulation to reddit for demonstrating to everyone and specially the USA how useful the GDPR is for the citizen.

wow I just checked and all my deleted comments are restored (used the power delete suite)

jokes on them, I’m petty enough to sit here and manually delete everything

I manually deleted most of my comments but left a few and decided to go and edit them with AI rephrasing as someone suggested. I mostly deleted the older comments and got confused when I saw 2 comments reappear. This makes sense now.

Quick and dirty Google search says GDPR law is complicated when it comes to backups https://www.itgovernance.eu/blog/en/the-gdpr-how-the-right-to-be-forgotten-affects-backups-2

Likely not the popular opinion here; but I’m not going to go through the trouble of re-deleting any posts they might have restored. That’s just additional frustration for me. I’m not going to go over to Reddit and provide them additional traffic to go look at something I did write on their platform at one point. I’m just moving on.

This just feels really shitty to me at like a basic level. The rest of the shenanigans were just your typical shitty corporate stuff. This feels a bit more like it could have pretty large ramifications.

Has anyone tried phoning a GDPR focused lawyer firm? I just did a google and they offer a "free consultation" I would like to get the facts 100% before raising my pitchfork.

I recently made a browser extension that deletes your reddit posts or comments. It's not quite as advanced as PowerDelete yet but it's easier to install and I'm actively developing it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit-posts/nbfdoajmaaohkohdnbpjakamhcaaleco?hl=en&authuser=0

Let me know if you try it!

So, so, so glad I deleted my entire account. This is so unethical.

I’ve seen comments suggesting it’s something to do with PowerDelete. I used Shreddit to overwrite and delete mine and they’re still gone.

If this is not a bug, it's pretty wild. I don't think this is even compliant to GDPR as for European users unless there is legal obligation or for archiving in public interest, scientific progress etc. I have a hard time seeing protection for Reddit here as it's just a social news site, there's no way around that. It's not a bundle of research papers and the police hasn't come knocking on their door asking them to recover content.

See The right to erasure (Article 17 & 19).

The Lord of Snoo, spez has unleashed a dick move towards the platform.

Gonna love the Snoo Platform, Inc. panic mode in action.

Just wait a bit then delete your data. They can't keep an eye on it forever.

"Their" content.

EDIT: I mean, I agree that this is a new low even for social media. I think Stack Overflow made a similar statement when they stopped exporting to the internet archive, "their" content, not the user's content on their site. The users disagreed and I think the export has restarted, but it definitely shows you what the new group of CEOs think of their communities.

I'm definitely sticking to using only federated social media going forward, even for marketing.