this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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I nuked my Reddit accounts today. Deleted all comments and posts, then the accounts themselves. The tool I used showed each comment as it was deleted, and it was bittersweet.

I watched old gaming and movie discussions I barely remember appear and then get flagged as deleted. Communities I once participated in and then moved on as the years past flashed by. I remembered how I felt back then, and then watched them scroll on into oblivion.

Now I feel...I guess it's grief. Sadness for that part that's gone. Sadness that it'll never be there again. Like footprints on a beach wiped away by the tide. It's like it never happened. There is no trace.

And I feel anger. Mad that it came to this. Mad that I let a corporation have so much of my time and thoughts. Mad that they made it clear my life was nothing but a product to them.

It's over now. Time for a new chapter.

Anyone else have strong feelings about losing a part of the past like this?

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

13 years account here. I’ve been postponing doing the same thing. In the last months I’ve grown opposed to Facebook, then Twitter, then finally Reddit. I’ve come to the conclusion that any form of corporate social media is harmful to individuals and communities.

Every discussion you’ve had has contributed to how you are today and that remains.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

I did last weekend, and 8 year old Reddit account plus my Twitter account, deleted all content I've ever published. I also uninstalled RiF and Twitter.

It felt weird but now it's liberating. I just check Jerboa and Tusky from time to time and I feel that Beehaw and lgbt.tech are such open places, far from the toxicity of Reddit and Twitter.

I feel you, but I know you'll feel better again soon! 🐝❤️

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Just make sure to go back in a day or two to make sure your comments/posts stay deleted. Reddit restored all my posts/comments that I edited using Power Delete Suite back to their original content.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Another report of deleted Reddit comments/submissions being restored: https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/110553478094196259

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I had a few posts I left up, and I found that comments from when I had previously chatted with people were still there despite having a 100% cleared comment history. So, I'm wondering if a bunch of my old comments are actually out there, even though my profile says I have none.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

13 years here, I nuked all the comments with Redact, but today I checked my comments on reddit and I still have a few dozens, so I renuked them. I will see tomorrow if some comments reappear?

I think I'll keep my account, but logoff from everywhere

EDIT: I think all the comments behind private sub cannot be deleted, this is why this morning the tool found new ones

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Gonna do the same. Nuke all my comments and keep the account. Just change the password to something unintelligible.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You need subs to not be private to see/delete comments on them. So I'd recommend waiting for those are are going to come back to come back, then re-shred the posts. If that is your goal.

If you use Redact.dev, you can automate/schedule this process.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I know how you feel. Seeing how much i had contributed to them over the years was crazy. I overwrote all mine with a protest message and several hours later deleted the accounts. The site has changed for the worse with just all of us taking steps like this

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Imagine all the real life conversations you have had that isn't documented in any way and you have forgotten ever took place. People that you dont even know you've forgotten. That is a part of life and even if old conversations are valuable, they are not as valuable as making new ones.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

went through and deleted everything I could on my profile. I don't feel bad about it I killed all my other social media accounts years ago. Life is easier that way for sure.

unfortunately I cant seem to actually delete the account itself though. that button just results in "Something went wrong while deleting your account. Come back later and try again." How convenient that must be for their sales data.

if anyone knows how to get around that please share

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

figured it out. got to go through the old.reddit.com to do this apparently.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Good to know, thank you!

I'll be doing this for my Reddit account before the 30th rolls around and these deletion bots stop working.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's bittersweet to me, I love that there is new opportunities ahead and I am excited to see where technology goes from here, but there is that sadness that comes from seeing something you really loved be destroyed. I have seen things come and go so many times, I try to look on the bright side, and accept the change. No use dwelling on something you can't personally change.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

You post is almost a poem. It was nice to read.

If I can offer a different more positive view. You connected with other humans, and shared your experiences and love for your hobbies. Yes it happened on reddit, but it can happen again somewhere else.

I know this is quoted to death but here are some wise words from Dr. Seuss:

  • Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Rando internet hug

I still have my account left because I'm an incurable optimist. Or rather, realist. Spaz can't keep getting away with this shit forever you know? At some point, the board is going to look at his childish antics disguised as corporate governance and say "Hey, this guy is a big fat phony!" and then.. his goose is going to be cooked.

Still, deleting tons of shit is rough. I did the same for my Digg account which had a few years on it.

But .. see it like this, you used your voice and you said "fuck you!" and left. That counts for something.

The fediverse and lemmingverse reminds me of how Reddit used to be. Sure, fewer posts, but much more salience. More actual content instead of repost bots. Less Onlyfans and more actual horny people posting stuff. More nerds and less HURR DURR retards.

I know I jumped off the cliff to be with you fellow Lemmings, but damn if it isn't fun!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

I spent so much time there on reddit spreading knowledge of the things I had experience with and was passionate about (mostly piercing care, plant care, and science related stuff, which Ill admit is a pretty random combination of things).
For now, I can't bring myself to delete it.
But I do look forward to spreading the things I learned to a brand new audience, so Im keeping my head high even if Im sad its come to this

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Please check that your comments and accounts stay deleted!

It seems Reddit is restoring deleted comments.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I wonder if this is a GDPR violation for us Europeans.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

yeah mine were restored after 1-2 days

I had used the power delete suite, so they must be tracking if users are submitting hundreds of delete requests in a small time window

https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/34112

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

When I deleted my account a few years back, I felt similar but mostly relief actually.

The sad part is that we spend so much of our lives in our phones. I don't like that it's reddit that gets the data, it's much better if it's not under some corporation, but I wish we enjoyed our lives more instead. But they are often boring and routine since our daily energy goes into working for someone so we can pay bills and have a place.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Similar feelings here, but we can make new content! https://youtube.com/shorts/dN5sn37vNGs?feature=share

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I did this earlier this week to my 10yr old account. I used redact to delete my posts and comments as well. I didnt think it was fair since I'm one of those Apollo users.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

@m_talon Didn't you get to download your data in any way?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I deleted my 11 year old reddit account just an hour ago. I first overwrote all comments with one promoting lemmy with instructions on how to choose an instance.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

My account was 14 years old and I had that same feeling. I've been pretty disgruntled with Reddit for nearly a decade, so I'm more surprised that I managed to stick with that site for so long.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Beautifully written, and moving. I think I understand how you feel, and I empathize with you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I don’t delete my data (posts) because once you google a problem and you realize that a solution that you are looking at is written by you few years back you know you do a good job and you could be saving your future self an headache.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Ya, you know I haven't opened reddit since the blackout started. I removed "slide" from my phones home screen.

It's kinda sad, but I'm rediscovering RSS, now I've found kbin, and Im fine. I think not mindlessly scrolling reddit after my main interests have been covered has been nice for my brain.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Personally, I always deleted and re-created accounts after a year at most. Still have my current but I've hardly used it since migrating.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

As much as I'm unhappy with reddit I don't think I could bring myself to delete my comments. Seems like a loss for the internet at large to do so, nothing more frustrating to be searching for help on a topic only to find that the solution was removed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

It is a loss of information. That is not your fault. The blame lies at the feet of Reddit corporate management. The users benefit from your information, and even the visitors who find their way via Google or whatever. But the one who benefits more than anyone else is Reddit. And the thought of them benefiting from my and your contributions while fucking over their entire userbase for what amounts to nothing more than greed makes me sick.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

doing the same as we speak. My replacement text is "Moved to Lemmy because Reddit has become greedy with data generated by their community"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

is there a way to mass edit your comments? I'd love to change all my comments to "Moved to kbin/lemmy"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Use powerdeletesuite it does what you ask for and you can download all posts and comments before overwriting as an excel file

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I can't bring myself to delete stuff like that, in the same way that I don't like throwing away books. If I post less on Reddit so be it, and if I eventually stop then meh, but I want my post history to still be there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I nuked a 13- and an 11-year old account yesterday after commenting over then deleting each comment. I'm a bit sad, but if I'm honest, I've been wanting a reason to drop reddit for a while now. It just hasn't been the same in a long time. It's still young here, but I like what this has the potential to become rather than what might have been if things were different over there. Ever onward!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I deleted all of the posts and comments on my 10 year-old account. After seeing what established Reddit accounts are going for on eBay, I'm considering selling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

here's a question, wouldn't it be more impactful to encourage users to redact with a protest statement promoting fedverse first?

assuming they're doing a 30 day backup scheme then this becomes part of their working set going forward. messing with the data in this way especially if we can do it in volume might make it harder for LLMs to extract useful information from our noise.

we then can then start deleting our posts as a second protest after that.

thoughts?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I really just wanted to be done and gone from reddit, to be honest. My reaction when something like this happens isn't to make a big scene. I just delete my content and vanish into the ether. Only time I actually made a farewell post was Facebook, and that was just to let my friends/family know how to continue to contact me. With Twitter I just nuked my posts and killed the account.

Reddit can probably filter/censor any sort of fediverse spam anyway, so it just seemed like extra steps at this point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

For those asking, I used redact.dev to delete my stuff. It's available on lots of platforms including mobile.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

No desire to download my data (just more crap to have) and seeing posts as they are deleted is likely one more time than I would have looked at them otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

can anyone recommend an easy tool to do this? I don't want to leave anything behind they can scrape and profit from.

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