If you’re using a script to do so, make sure it’s handling API limits specifically for “edit” calls. I realized after I tried overwriting mine that it was quietly skipping a bunch of comments, presumably because there is (allegedly) a 1 edit call per 5 second rate limit. Since adding a 5 second delay between each re-write, it seems to be working for me.
I ran into this issue with u/j0be’s Power Delete Suite, I ended up writing my own script to do the job.
I understand the protests but why are people deleting their comment history? Can’t you just delete your account?
Deleting your account doesn’t impact all the content you generated, meaning Reddit can still profit off of it.
This, and also it’s far harder for them to revert if they decided too much of their content had been deleted by protesting users. Overwriting the content means it remains a persistent issue well into the future, rather than something they can easily ignore or undo.
Oh, I see 👍 thanks for clarifying
𝚄𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚘𝚍. 𝙷𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚢.
Your code is buggy bro
If you just delete your account your comments are still there and it’ll say [deleted] instead of your user name.
I’m not fully aware and up-to-date, but I’ve seen a few posts suggesting that Reddit is keeping your data on their servers, a few users have said some of their stuff got undeleted.
Yes, they keep the comment history forever. The idea is that as long as content is not publicly visible nobody will find it via Google and visit Reddit to be exposed to their ads.
There are a couple ways to handle this.
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This happens with PowerDeleteSuite’s main version, but one of the forks has a 5 sec pause between deletes that does work. It’s very slow (~1000 comments edited in 2 hours), but works reliably.
https://github.com/deestan/PowerDeleteSuite -
This userscript will manually overwrite comments manually. You go to your comments page, scroll until there are no more comments to load, and run it. It’ll go 1 by 1 - edit, new text entered, save, 3 sec pause. By default the replacement text is a link to the script, but you can just edit that to be whatever you want (and you should edit it to make it harder for Reddit to batch restore).
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/468337-so-long-reddit-thanks-for-all-the-fish
Note 1: Method #2 doesn’t use the API, so should still work on July 1. PDS does use the API, so might not.
Note 2: Both methods allow you to continue to use the browser in another tab or window (at least in Firefox). Some browsers and extensions will suspend or unload tabs if they haven’t been viewed in a while, so best policy is to do this in a separate window.
Note 3: The default PowerDelete Suite should be fine for exclusively deleting comments if you run it several times. Just keep running it until nothing shows up under comments. To be sure, once your comments are all gone, wait an hour, and check again. If anything remains, use method #2.(Overwriting account #7 right now! Using PDS with 5 sec pause has worked flawlessly.)
Pass this along to anyone having trouble!
That second one is incredibly handy for those of us waiting until the API is shut off just in case. Kudos!
The API should still work for scripts like this in theory, though I wouldn’t put it passed them to fuck with it anyway
Yup, I could see Reddit noticing a large number of comment edits and bumping that timeout higher.
Also, many users probably don’t know what forks are and might just run the first version of PDS they see, see that it isn’t “working”, and give up or wait for an update that never comes. The userscript is easier to understand because it visually performs the same actions a person would take to edit comments. And it’s more fun to watch than PDS’s progress bar. :)
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So what’s the best edit we can go for? Dunno if FU u/spez is great. Shouting out the fediverse? What’s the go-to edit users are going for?
I think something like
“Comment removed in protest of Reddit’s API policy”
is best because if non-Redditors stumble across it it might dissuade them from joining Reddit. It is also very clear as to why you are unhappy.
This is what I did. I also added some stats about the account: account age, total karma, # of comments, ect. Otherwise it’s not clear how much value is being lost if you just come across the comment in the wild.
I found a new issue.
All of my comments on my profile are gone. All posts. Everything.
I can google my username and still find comments out there. Yes, I can go in and manually change/delete, but they’re not showing up on my profile for, let’s just say, ease of removal.
Apparently editing also doesn’t work in subreddits set to private.
You mentioned that so I looked back on my account that I’ve shredded, but not deleted, and sure enough, there was more content in it. So those have now been shredded as well.
