Remote View

2y ago

Reddit is restoring deleted posts

mstdn.games Chris 👾 (@chris@mstdn.games)

Attached: 2 images 👿 PSA: #Reddit is restoring deleted and overwritten posts to save what they consider "their data". This is a new low and probably illegal at least in Europe. You can send a GDPR or CPRA request here: https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request These are screenshots of my prof...

I just logged in and checked my reddit account, and all my deleted posts have come back.

82 comments

I have already sent a GDPR request to Reddit and they refuse to comply.
I asked them to delete everything they have about me, including my account and they told me that I need to login into reddit and ask it from there which:
I don't have to since GDPR says that I can even do it verbally and I don't even have to write to a specific email, I can just let any employee of that company that I want this and they should honor it.
They straight up don't even have the option to delete your data there, since I requested for the complete erasure of my data as that is also in my rights.
Reddit literally refuses to comply with GDPR rules and tonight after work I am going to lodge a formal complain about GDPR violations as I do have proof of this in my emails.
Fuck Reddit I hope it crashes and burns.
- Mm mm sure does smell like EU legal action in here.
  On a serious note, that is an absolute new low for Reddit and I’m sorry that you have to deal with it right now.
  
  Yea, get onto your national data commissioner or friendly solicitor and see what happens, it's crazy that they aren't following GDPR. Good luck!
- Personally, I'd file the complaint with the Irish government. They seem to have a habit of going after big social media companies like Meta for GDPR violations.
- I am going to lodge a formal complain about GDPR violations as I do have proof of this in my emails.
  This is the way.
- @Alkalyon
  @shindig1457
  Can a non European make use of this. Or do I have to be in Europe to make and register a complaint. I assume there is nothing I can do here but I might as well ask.
  
  For companies, GDPR applies to people in European Economic Area whose data is used by companies, or companies that have an office in EEA or another stable arrangement in EEA and process personal data of people located anywhere.
  
  You can file a complaint with any EU supervisory authority, even if you're not personally an EU citizen, as long as the company you're complaining about does operate specifically and targeted in the EU. It is better if you are a citizen though. But as long as they're mishandling EU citizens data, doesn't matter who tells the authorities.
  
  If you are not a European citizen you cannot ask for your data to be deleted but you 100% can report a company, in this context Reddit, for not complying with GDPR.
- They are supposed to verify that the person requesting deletion or another right under GDPR is the same as the person whose data it is, or that at least the requester is authorized to act for the person whose data it is.
  
  The controller should use all reasonable measures to verify the identity of a data subject
  Huge emphasis on reasonable. If by asking me to log in for the sake of verification results in me not being able to delete my data as I've demonstrated above, then this is 100% NOT REASONABLE.
  They are actively hindering the process that GDPR requires me to take.
  I don't care about the small letters, this is a GDPR violation. I should have an easy way to delete my data and this ain't it.
- How much could they get fined for this?
  
  But even the catalogue of less severe violations in Art. 83(4) GDPR sets forth fines of up to 10 million euros, or, in the case of an undertaking, up to 2% of its entire global turnover of the preceding fiscal year, whichever is higher.
- @Alkalyon @shindig1457 I deleted my reddit account today. It's going to crash and burn and I'm here for it

If this checks out, they may be in disrespect of a bunch of privacy laws including GDPR.
- And you really don't want to screw around with GDPR:
  Non-compliance with an order by the supervisory authority as referred to in Article 58(2) shall, in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Article, be subject to administrative fines up to 20 000 000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 4 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher.
  https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679#d1e6226-1-1
  
  4% feels really low, I wish the EU set it to like 25%
- Looks like it checks out. https://mstdn.games/@chris/110553477682106144
  
  Damn with screenshots and everything. Reddit might be screwd
- Now, that depends. Does the GPDR require a formal process to request to be deleted? They could claim that any activity that doesn't come in through that formal process doesn't count.
  Sounds like all you EU Redditors that had your comments restored need to use that account deletion page.
  
  Not familiar with or if they have a complain process, but anyone(European) can file a complain with their national data protection authority ... That should be enough to trigger an investigation.
  
  The request can be in any form and to anyone in the company

They're really scraping the barrel now.
But the main thing we can do is move quality content here.

Holy shit! They restored my comments that I deleted the other day. What a crock of shit. Fuck u/spez.
- This is wild. What the hell

WTF!!! Thx for raising awareness. This is crossing a line.
I guess next step would be not to delete posts but to edit them.
- Another user said they restore edited content too. They blanket restore anyone's content which looks like it's deleted by a script.
  I can't go on and manually delete twelve years of comments, I don't think anyone can.
  This will only be resolved if enough people take them to court and reddit is forced to add a complete data deletion option for all users.
  
  That's low. I wouldn't put it past them, but I want to see proof before commenting on this.

Really? How does that play with jurisdictions that have right to right to be forgotten laws? Seems like a pretty risky play for them to restore deleted posts that were explicitly deleted by its author.
- That smells like massive fines in the EU due to GDPR law.

In another thread, someone mentioned that the scripts that delete comments don't work if the sub is private, so it could be that people are thinking their content was deleted, but the deletion didn't actually happen.
I haven't done it, so I can't validate that.

Rather than delete posts, I propose all rexxitors instead edit all of their posts and comments to say that they are leaving reddit for good to go to the fediverse instead. Such edits should provide links to major Fediverse sites and getting started guides, with advice for other redditors to abandon that place and join us here.
- My guess is that then they'll just restore the edits

So I overwrite my posts and deleted with power delete suite, then deleted my account, and I’ve gone back and looked for my most recent posts and comments and they are still indeed gone.
I’m wondering if some people ran it while subs are already private and it simply wasn’t able to remove those posts and they didn’t show up until the subs became active again?
Not sure, but it’s not everyone that’s affected apparently.

Reddit restoring deleted comments somehow doesn't surprise me. Their descent seems to be accelerating. Nice try, losers. I'm still not going back.

thankful i used a script to mass-edit my profile, which seems to still be in effect (first and only time i visit a reddit URL post-spezdown, just directly typed my profile link so i don't give the front page any "views" or "engagement" or whatever the corpo hogs are calling it now)

This is why I edited all my comments to say that a certain CEO is a greedy little pig boy instead of straight on deleting them.
- Supposedly they're also undoing mass edits
  Fucking pigboy doing pigboy things
- They also reverted those back.

After reading this, I'm deleting my post and comment history immediately, but not my account. I will check regularly and delete again if reddit tries to bring it back. Might as well make them work for it.
- you can schedule deletions with redact.dev app, in case you wanna set it up automatically

That is exactly why you should always edit your stuff before deleting it. Very few companies ever save more than the last version of your stuff, due to space and performance considerations. That way they can restore whatever they want, it'll simply come out as "x" or whatever you put in there.
- Except they're also apparently restoring even edited posts and comments.
  
  Source?
- There is a website that keeps the first version so while they may not keep version 2 to n-2) they at leqst have n and 1)
- I did this for this exact reason

@shindig1457
GDPR is going to have fun with that...

How are they even distinguishing between protest deletions and content that was genuinely deleted for a different reason?
- Why would they care either way? The only goal is to keep content on the site so the lemming users keep doomscrolling and seeing ads, so they couldn't give a rats ass if the deleted content was a protest deletion or a generic user deletion.
  Moderator "deletion" is a different kind and wouldn't be affected by these restores.
- Likely an algorithm that detects a large number of of quick deletions.

What script are you using to mass edit? Even if they revert it, I would like to try.
- I used PowerDeleteSuite to edit and delete. You can configure it to just edit if you want.
  
  Edits seem to be throttled to one every 5 seconds. I ran powerdeletesuite several times and it got most of my comments, but still not all.

Copying my comment from another thread below. I have since realised that Reddit does have to be GDPR compliant so it must be applicable, but does it apply to all content?
Would this actually be a GDPR breach? I was thinking about the right to erasure/to be forgotten earlier in relation to a post I saw about how your posts aren't deleted on other federated instances, if you delete them on your home server. But I figured it wasn't applicable because it's not personal data and I'm thinking the same about this Reddit issue. Can anyone set me straight?
- Yes, definition of personal data from GDPR:
  'personal data' means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
  
  Ah, thank you. I didn't realise the definition covered so much but it makes sense especially with how the data could be used in conjunction with other identifying data. I should obviously brush up on my understanding of GDPR!
  
  Folks in the EU should file a GDPR complaint against reddit for every deleted post restored.
  I bet someone could script that and share the code...

https://github.com/xaradox/reddit-comment-nuke

This might be a silly question, because you know, big companies tend to ignore laws, but this cannot be GDPR (or maybe more importantly for this the California equivalent due to jurisdiction) compliant right?

This is fucking nuts, but I'm also glad that deleting my account hurt them so much.

if we want to be more mischievous... https://lemmy.ml/post/1320610

I have comments and posts that aren't appearing in my profile on new or old Reddit. It's nearly impossible to comb everything to find them. I deleted everything I could but I'm still finding things.

This is actually good. Mass-deleting posts and comments hurts users more than Reddit itself in the long term.
- When you strike, the goal is to inconvenience or otherwise impact the users of the service. That's how you hurt the service provider.
  When the bus drivers strike, who does it hurt more? The public transit office? Or riders?
  When grocery store employees strike, that has direct impact on shoppers.
  When the writers guild strikes, the most affected are filmnand television viewers.
  The whole goal is to affect change by altering the behaviour of users. Otherwise, you just get scabs.
- No, it hurts reddit more.
  
  Yeah, it’s hurts the users which hurts the company. Individual users are mildly inconvenience, but if many people delete posts Reddit will feel that cumulative pain.
- It is good that Reddit takes unlawful control over the posts I made?
- If people coming from Google see Reddit as pagesnof [deleted] it will soon lose its seo and ranking

82 comments