Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Asked Reddit support to give me API key so I can delete my data. They refused

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 22 posts

Re: Asked Reddit support to give me API key so I can delete my data. They refused

#12

Post by stevekemp »

al_borland wrote: post #8
BruceNCNP wrote: post #5

Why doesn't deleting an account come with an option to wipe all personal data?

Because the value of the site is in the user data. Even before they went public, they asked that people deleting accounts don’t delete their posts/comments before leaving, to avoid broken conversation threads.

A similar on this very site too, of course.

Re: Asked Reddit support to give me API key so I can delete my data. They refused

#15

Post by red-iron-pine »

kay_o wrote: post #10
borplk wrote: post #3

I guess you'll have to do it with browser automation. I assume that's possible?

If you are caught midway, you get banned for abuse/ToS, and you are not allowed to delete/edit your comments-account if you are unable to sign in. (I am guessing they are retaining data under some bullshit about gdpr legitimate interest in preventing abuse) Rate limits are also quite low so it might take weeks to delete. Many subs will automatically ban you if you edit a comment to say something like 'redacted by' (e…

nah i do it all the time

log in, click on my profile, press f-12, go to console, run some script i found a while ago.

get to watch em go, one at a time. slow process compared to a API key but it's nice to see what I wrote 6 months ago and what the final karma score was.

probably gonna stop using the site in a month or so tho. site has gone down hill

Re: Asked Reddit support to give me API key so I can delete my data. They refused

#17

Post by bjourne »

benoau wrote: post #16

The best advice I've seen for conclusively deleting your account is to get it banned.

Alas. it's not enough. My account got banned ages ago but all my comments are still there. Apparently, the only way to delete your comments is to delete them one by one. Undoubtedly that only hides them and they still live on in Reddit's comments database to be sold to every paying data broker.

Re: Asked Reddit support to give me API key so I can delete my data. They refused

#18

Post by stackghost »

dalekirkwood wrote: post #11

I feel like Reddit has just become such a toxic place. Surely they have to comply with EU laws. They can't leave your data up without permission?

>I feel like Reddit has just become such a toxic place.

The more I learned about reddit's early history, the more I realized it was always rather toxic. Alexis and Steve (and Jeremy) were totally fine with Michael Brutsch (/u/violentacrez) promoting lots of gross shit (jailbait, pics of dead kids etc.) until they caught some bad publicity and it started to affect their bottom line.

I guess everyone has their price, and money talks, but it really seemed (and still seems) like reddit is happy to host all kinds of horrific content until said content results in negative press, and then suddenly it's about "protecting users", those same users that the reddit staff clearly didn't give two shits about the week prior. They care about privacy, except when it's about targeting ads to users or selling user data to advertisers. They care about the integrity of the platform, except when Steve Huffman was editing user comments for funsies.

The hypocrisy galls me more than anything.

Re: Asked Reddit support to give me API key so I can delete my data. They refused

#19

Post by noman-land »

I recommend writing a little bit of javascript you can paste into the browser console of your logged in session that will page through all your messages and delete them one by one, with a sensible delay to avoid rate limits. Then let it run overnight. No API needed.

Other ideas include pulling the auth token from your logged in cookie and using it outside the browser. Don't forget to use a standard Chrome user agent.

Post reply on HN