this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Reddit Migration

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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 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 those missed comments would still show in the Profile page).

spez: edited for clarity.

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[–] Vilian@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it's look like the google cached your comments, just waits a few days and search your username again

[–] anon@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It’s not just the search results, it’s the actual comments, on the Reddit website itself, still visible under my username. Despite redact.dev reporting a complete wipe weeks ago, and the Reddit profile > comments page returning zero result.

I only used Google to do a sanity check weeks after the deletion, and found all those leftovers that even Reddit doesn’t report to me as being still there.

[–] Aloomineum@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I deleted my comments last week but its like you say, they still show up in the threads on reddit.

How do i make sure these comments are properly deleted? Weird thing is the comments showing make it look like i deleted my account, and not the comments, which is not the case. I still have my account, i only deleted my comments and posts.

[–] anon@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you still able to log in and delete each comment manually? That’s the only reliable method, unless of course Reddit goes full Satan and actively reverses deletions on purpose.

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dammit. I'm never going to be able to delete my reddit account if I want be truly sure my comments don't res back.