TL;DR: even if your delete script confirms a full wipe and your Reddit profile page shows zero comment, there may still be comments left over (that you can find through a search engine and delete manually on Reddit).

Weeks ago, I used redact.dev well before the API shutdown to delete all my Reddit comments (thousands of them over 10+ years). Redact.dev confirmed a full wipe, and my Profile > Comments page on Reddit confirmed I had no comment left.

Yet, as of today, Google still returns dozens of results for “$myredditusername site:reddit.com”. It’s not just Google’s crawler lagging; when I follow those links, those comments are still visible on the Reddit website, under my username, where I have the ability to manually delete them.

Thankfully, I hadn’t yet nuked my account because I knew of other users whose deleted comments got reinstated (although that was thought to be caused by the deletion script exceeding the API rate limit; supposedly a different case, as they should show in the Profile page).

So even if your Reddit profile says you have no more comments, use a search engine and you may find plenty of leftovers.

spez: edited for clarity.

  • ColdCreasent@lemmy.ca
    1·
    1 year ago

    I appreciate the input of a link/name of the GitHub that can delete comments. I agree they should lose in the end for refusing to delete all content and it’s just a matter of getting them there.

    Also, anyone still planning to delete their comments and then delete their account: make sure your comments are gone and then wait a few weeks to make sure the comments stay gone.