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I really think they are just misunderstanding something. When I look at my profile, there's no comments, but I know there should be some. Isn't it more likely t

I really think they are just misunderstanding something. When I look at my profile, there's no comments, but I know there should be some. Isn't it more likely that when a subreddit you posted in goes private, the comments don't show up. The people in the linked thread ran the delete script after some subreddits went private. Now when some are made public again, so are their comments. Comments that were never deleted with the tool as they were hidden because of the subreddit being private.

jorams 3y ago
Yeah, the mention of June 14th suggests the same to me. I can attest that comments from private subreddits don't show up on your own profile. The deletion script won't be able to find them nor delete them.
popey 3y ago
I used Power Delete Suite to remove all comments from all public and private subs. They all came back today. So I re-deleted them again. I suspect it's more likely the site didn't process the deletions properly, rather than maliciously bringing them back, or as you suggest, that they were private. Edit: It's possible that the deletion only worked on public posts, after all, it seems?
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Absolutely this. I highly doubt Reddit would want to fuck this up at this point for seemingly minimal gain. Much more likely that a 10x increase in deletions caused some pipeline to collapse somewhere.
  - goykasi 3y ago
    I can see this starting a positive feedback loop of issues. More people get upset; so more people start deleting -- cascading failures start occurring. Hopefully their team can keep it under control. But would the current upset userbase even believe reddit if they came out and said "our deletes arent working right now. please try again later."
  - zoky 3y ago
    As much as I hate to give Reddit the benefit of the doubt, I think you’re right that Hanlon’s razor may well apply here, albeit substituting incompetence for stupidity.
    - hunter2_ 3y ago
      I think you meant to say "substituting stupidity" -- the new thing is the substitute for the old thing.
      - zoky 3y ago
        Hanlon’s Razor states: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I’m saying Reddit is incompetent in this case, rather than stupid. Not quite sure what you’re getting at?
        hunter2_ 3y ago
        Oh, my mistake. For some reason I thought it stated incompetence.
        zoky 3y ago
        No worries; I assumed you weren’t being malicious.
- jlmorton 3y ago
  I did the same a week ago, deleting fifteen years worth and several thousand comments using Shreddit, by editing and deleting, however mine have not been restored, so I doubt this was some kind of broad action. I very much doubt Reddit cares at all about the small number of us that have done this.
  - DavideNL 3y ago
    Me too… note that Shreddit first edits the comment, and then, deletes it. Not sure if this would complicate a restore process by Reddit.
    - cge 3y ago
      Apparently not. I deleted my comments with shreddit, editing first, and at least a large portion of them appear to have been restored to their original text.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  Reading about Power Delete Suite https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite They don't mention being able to delete from private subs, and their method of deletion sounds like it would fail when the subs are set to private. I'll admit Reddit barely deserves the benefit of the doubt at this point, but I have no idea how you would delete posts on private subs except through some GDPR way that must exist.
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    If I comment in a sub that has since been set to private, can I not see my own comments on my own profile page? If so, do those comments not have an edit/delete button under them?
    - Glench 3y ago
      Yes, comments you made in private subs don't show in your comment history. I recently made a browser extension that deletes your entire reddit history and ran into this while testing. Edit: Adding the link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit-posts/nbfdoajmaaohkohdnbpjakamhcaaleco?hl=en&authuser=0 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit...
- rodw 3y ago
  I've got a decade old account on which I've made a habit of manually deleting comments older than 6 - 9 months, since they get so little visibility and there's no value in leaving a breadcrumb trail. Checking just now I see that comments up to 3 - 4 years old have been restored. I'm not going to speculate as to why (beyond agreeing it's more likely to be incompetence than malice) but in my case at least there are definitely long deleted comments that have been restored.
  - lumb63 3y ago
    I’m astounded and confused that you and a lot of other commenters are giving Reddit the benefit of the doubt. At a time when tensions between Reddit management and its users are at an all-time high, and both sides are maliciously striking back and forth, most commenters are assuming that an act like this is due to incompetence rather than malice? I don’t understand the thought process.
    - ziftface 3y ago
      It's also worth noting that reddit admins have maliciously modified comments in the past.
      - mandmandam 3y ago
        This one in particular, in fact - Steve Huffman, aka spez. Google "fuck spez" to see just how popular this guy is. Same guy who un-personed Aaron Swartz, claiming he wasn't a cofounder after Swartz died, and removing him from Reddit's founder page.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - hackinthebochs 3y ago
      Because there's no apparent benefit to reddit to bring back long deleted comments from arbitrary users. When you can think of no motive for malicious behavior, it is unparsimonious to assume malicious behavior.
- eek2121 3y ago
  Use GDPR. Even if you aren't in the EU.
  - derwiki 3y ago
    CCPA for some of us, and refer to the CA AG if the business does not adequately comply
- neatze 3y ago
  It could be because people are selling there's accounts in protest.
- veave 3y ago
  That's impossible. You can't see comments you made in private subs, therefore you couldn't have deleted them.
  - didntcheck 3y ago
    Which is itself a problem IMO. Discord is the same, but at least they have a tiny excuse (being very charitable here) in that they'd have to add a new UI view for that, but Reddit already has the profile view where a user should be able to see all the comments they've made
    - swed420 3y ago
      Hopefully the top organizers of the reddit strike consider arranging a "delete day" where all subs temporarily go public again for this purpose
- zikduruqe 3y ago
  I've been using Shreddit for years, and thus far, all my deleted comments and posts have not shown back up.
- popey 3y ago
  Ok, r/funny just went public, and one of my comments re-appeared in my profile. So I am confident that what's happening is the deletion of comments isn't happening on subreddits that are private (as r/funny was when I ran my delete script). As soon as the subreddit goes public, they "re-appear"
nottorp 3y ago
I don't think the delete function actually deletes anything. At best sets a flag. If i wrote public forum software, that's how I would do it and batch delete only comments that no one asked to undelete in at least a few months...
- m-p-3 3y ago
  I doubt that is GDPR-compliant.
  - kvdveer 3y ago
    A 30-day lag in deletion is compliant IF you communicate that that's what you do (i.e. write that down in your privacy policy).
    - notimetorelax 3y ago
      Yes, but after that there should be a wipeout.
  - ddalex 3y ago
    Does reddit have any kind of business presence in the EU ? How would the EU law be enforced?
    - sebzim4500 3y ago
      Presumably there are EU companies paying them for ads
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      They sell their Reddit Gold in the EU and sell advertising space to European companies.
    - 369548684892826 3y ago
      If reddit employees want to travel to europe then a way to enforce it can be found
juujian 3y ago
Also important to note that this is an indicator that Reddit has lost all trust from (this part of) the community. Even if that is a plausible explanations, many will not give Reddit's current management the benefit of doubt. I simply would not put it past Hoffman to be that petty that he would do it, he seems to be taking after Musk more and more lately. Wasted so much goodwill. That will be tough to navigate for them, because once you have lost your user base's trust even an untrue allegation will cause a stir.
- moomin 3y ago
  The adage that “If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product” cuts both ways. Musk and Hoffman seem to be intent on waging war with their own product. They both get a lot of unpaid labour producing their content and then complain that the unpaid labour isn’t paying for the privilege.
  - qzx_pierri 3y ago
    Huffman (spez) has his reasons for the reddit changes, but they do seem a bit short-sighted. But there comes a point where these online services have to make money. It's as simple as that. So is he waging war on users, or making a business decision? Also, Musk is waging war against advertisers. Running a site that is controlled by advertisers is the epitome of extreme centralization, since the site's income can be halted if an advertiser gets upset. Musk is charging on Twitter so the users aren't the product. As for reddit, I think limiting API access to accounts with reddit gold seems like it would've been fair. That would've solved the income issues (the stated reason for the API changes), but then reddit wouldn't get all the telemetry data associated with users on their first party app. It seems like Huffman (spez) got greedy and wanted gold subscriptions, and the telemetry data from their first party app. It's usually one or the other (ads vs. user payment). I also want to end this by saying that I'm not trying to start an argument, but I know a lot of users on this site are very trigger happy with the downvote whenever anyone speaks objectively about Musk. If you don't agree with me, just chime in and we can discuss it.
    - jmholla 3y ago
atomicfiredoll 3y ago
From my observation you're right about how comments work regarding private communities, so this is plausible. Before going straight to a conclusion, I'll just caution it's also possible that both things are true. I'll wait and see how this plays out (while deleting my comments from the previously private communities.)

jorams 3y ago

Yeah, the mention of June 14th suggests the same to me. I can attest that comments from private subreddits don't show up on your own profile. The deletion script won't be able to find them nor delete them.

popey 3y ago

I used Power Delete Suite to remove all comments from all public and private subs. They all came back today. So I re-deleted them again. I suspect it's more likely the site didn't process the deletions properly, rather than maliciously bringing them back, or as you suggest, that they were private. Edit: It's possible that the deletion only worked on public posts, after all, it seems?

danpalmer 3y ago
Absolutely this. I highly doubt Reddit would want to fuck this up at this point for seemingly minimal gain. Much more likely that a 10x increase in deletions caused some pipeline to collapse somewhere.
- goykasi 3y ago
  I can see this starting a positive feedback loop of issues. More people get upset; so more people start deleting -- cascading failures start occurring. Hopefully their team can keep it under control. But would the current upset userbase even believe reddit if they came out and said "our deletes arent working right now. please try again later."
- zoky 3y ago
  As much as I hate to give Reddit the benefit of the doubt, I think you’re right that Hanlon’s razor may well apply here, albeit substituting incompetence for stupidity.
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    I think you meant to say "substituting stupidity" -- the new thing is the substitute for the old thing.
    - zoky 3y ago
      Hanlon’s Razor states: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I’m saying Reddit is incompetent in this case, rather than stupid. Not quite sure what you’re getting at?
      - hunter2_ 3y ago
        Oh, my mistake. For some reason I thought it stated incompetence.
        zoky 3y ago
        No worries; I assumed you weren’t being malicious.
jlmorton 3y ago
I did the same a week ago, deleting fifteen years worth and several thousand comments using Shreddit, by editing and deleting, however mine have not been restored, so I doubt this was some kind of broad action. I very much doubt Reddit cares at all about the small number of us that have done this.
- DavideNL 3y ago
  Me too… note that Shreddit first edits the comment, and then, deletes it. Not sure if this would complicate a restore process by Reddit.
  - cge 3y ago
    Apparently not. I deleted my comments with shreddit, editing first, and at least a large portion of them appear to have been restored to their original text.
boomboomsubban 3y ago
Reading about Power Delete Suite https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite They don't mention being able to delete from private subs, and their method of deletion sounds like it would fail when the subs are set to private. I'll admit Reddit barely deserves the benefit of the doubt at this point, but I have no idea how you would delete posts on private subs except through some GDPR way that must exist.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  If I comment in a sub that has since been set to private, can I not see my own comments on my own profile page? If so, do those comments not have an edit/delete button under them?
  - Glench 3y ago
    Yes, comments you made in private subs don't show in your comment history. I recently made a browser extension that deletes your entire reddit history and ran into this while testing. Edit: Adding the link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit-posts/nbfdoajmaaohkohdnbpjakamhcaaleco?hl=en&authuser=0 https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-delete-reddit...
rodw 3y ago
I've got a decade old account on which I've made a habit of manually deleting comments older than 6 - 9 months, since they get so little visibility and there's no value in leaving a breadcrumb trail. Checking just now I see that comments up to 3 - 4 years old have been restored. I'm not going to speculate as to why (beyond agreeing it's more likely to be incompetence than malice) but in my case at least there are definitely long deleted comments that have been restored.
- lumb63 3y ago
  I’m astounded and confused that you and a lot of other commenters are giving Reddit the benefit of the doubt. At a time when tensions between Reddit management and its users are at an all-time high, and both sides are maliciously striking back and forth, most commenters are assuming that an act like this is due to incompetence rather than malice? I don’t understand the thought process.
  - ziftface 3y ago
    It's also worth noting that reddit admins have maliciously modified comments in the past.
    - mandmandam 3y ago
      This one in particular, in fact - Steve Huffman, aka spez. Google "fuck spez" to see just how popular this guy is. Same guy who un-personed Aaron Swartz, claiming he wasn't a cofounder after Swartz died, and removing him from Reddit's founder page.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - hackinthebochs 3y ago
    Because there's no apparent benefit to reddit to bring back long deleted comments from arbitrary users. When you can think of no motive for malicious behavior, it is unparsimonious to assume malicious behavior.
eek2121 3y ago
Use GDPR. Even if you aren't in the EU.
- derwiki 3y ago
  CCPA for some of us, and refer to the CA AG if the business does not adequately comply
neatze 3y ago
It could be because people are selling there's accounts in protest.
veave 3y ago
That's impossible. You can't see comments you made in private subs, therefore you couldn't have deleted them.
- didntcheck 3y ago
  Which is itself a problem IMO. Discord is the same, but at least they have a tiny excuse (being very charitable here) in that they'd have to add a new UI view for that, but Reddit already has the profile view where a user should be able to see all the comments they've made
  - swed420 3y ago
    Hopefully the top organizers of the reddit strike consider arranging a "delete day" where all subs temporarily go public again for this purpose
zikduruqe 3y ago
I've been using Shreddit for years, and thus far, all my deleted comments and posts have not shown back up.
popey 3y ago
Ok, r/funny just went public, and one of my comments re-appeared in my profile. So I am confident that what's happening is the deletion of comments isn't happening on subreddits that are private (as r/funny was when I ran my delete script). As soon as the subreddit goes public, they "re-appear"

nottorp 3y ago

I don't think the delete function actually deletes anything. At best sets a flag. If i wrote public forum software, that's how I would do it and batch delete only comments that no one asked to undelete in at least a few months...

m-p-3 3y ago
I doubt that is GDPR-compliant.
- kvdveer 3y ago
  A 30-day lag in deletion is compliant IF you communicate that that's what you do (i.e. write that down in your privacy policy).
  - notimetorelax 3y ago
    Yes, but after that there should be a wipeout.
- ddalex 3y ago
  Does reddit have any kind of business presence in the EU ? How would the EU law be enforced?
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    Presumably there are EU companies paying them for ads
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    They sell their Reddit Gold in the EU and sell advertising space to European companies.
  - 369548684892826 3y ago
    If reddit employees want to travel to europe then a way to enforce it can be found

juujian 3y ago

Also important to note that this is an indicator that Reddit has lost all trust from (this part of) the community. Even if that is a plausible explanations, many will not give Reddit's current management the benefit of doubt. I simply would not put it past Hoffman to be that petty that he would do it, he seems to be taking after Musk more and more lately. Wasted so much goodwill. That will be tough to navigate for them, because once you have lost your user base's trust even an untrue allegation will cause a stir.

moomin 3y ago
The adage that “If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product” cuts both ways. Musk and Hoffman seem to be intent on waging war with their own product. They both get a lot of unpaid labour producing their content and then complain that the unpaid labour isn’t paying for the privilege.
- qzx_pierri 3y ago
  Huffman (spez) has his reasons for the reddit changes, but they do seem a bit short-sighted. But there comes a point where these online services have to make money. It's as simple as that. So is he waging war on users, or making a business decision? Also, Musk is waging war against advertisers. Running a site that is controlled by advertisers is the epitome of extreme centralization, since the site's income can be halted if an advertiser gets upset. Musk is charging on Twitter so the users aren't the product. As for reddit, I think limiting API access to accounts with reddit gold seems like it would've been fair. That would've solved the income issues (the stated reason for the API changes), but then reddit wouldn't get all the telemetry data associated with users on their first party app. It seems like Huffman (spez) got greedy and wanted gold subscriptions, and the telemetry data from their first party app. It's usually one or the other (ads vs. user payment). I also want to end this by saying that I'm not trying to start an argument, but I know a lot of users on this site are very trigger happy with the downvote whenever anyone speaks objectively about Musk. If you don't agree with me, just chime in and we can discuss it.
  - jmholla 3y ago

atomicfiredoll 3y ago

From my observation you're right about how comments work regarding private communities, so this is plausible. Before going straight to a conclusion, I'll just caution it's also possible that both things are true. I'll wait and see how this plays out (while deleting my comments from the previously private communities.)