TL;DR: even if your delete script confirms a full wipe and your Reddit profile page shows zero comment, there may still be comments left over (that you can find through a search engine and delete manually on Reddit).

Weeks ago, I used redact.dev to delete all my Reddit comments (thousands of them over 10+ years). Redact.dev confirmed a full wipe, and my Profile > Comments page on Reddit confirmed I had no comment left.

Yet, as of today, Google still returns dozens of results for “$myredditusername site:reddit.com”. It’s not just Google’s crawler lagging; when I follow those links, those comments are still visible on the Reddit website, under my username, where I have the ability to manually delete them.

Thankfully, I hadn’t yet nuked my account, because I knew of other users whose deleted comments got reinstated (although that was thought to be caused by the deletion script exceeding the API rate limit; supposedly a different case, as those missed comments would still show in the Profile page).

spez: edited for clarity.

  • IninewCrow
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    1 year ago

    Your comment made me rethink about what to do with me Reddit accounts … I’ve taken the past two days to auto delete all my comments, posts and submissions, deactivate all my mod accounts, unsubscribe from all the subs I followed … and in a day or two, I’ll complete delete the accounts.

    I know Reddit will still hold onto pieces of my account everywhere … but at least they’ll have a harder time justifying it all.