I’ve always meant to do this, but after hearing about the AI thing I want to get it done. Is there no free solution? I have too much history to clear manually.

EDIT: PowerDeleteSuite did the trick, thanks!

52 points

I used Power Delete Suite about a month or so ago, it’s foss and it worked great.

I set it to delete each comment, but in case Reddit tries to “roll back” my deletes I also set it to manually edit and save every comment to something (ex. “comment removed”), before doing the delete. It took a good hour to get through all my comments.

I also decided not to delete my 15yo account. My logic here was perhaps that will be a protection from Reddit resurrecting my comments or account in some way, since it’s still an active account. It just sits there empty now.

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12 points

I deleted my ancient accounts a while ago. Let them have my random comments and snide jokes. Any LLM trained against my account would get decommed quickly

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9 points

I’m fairly certain they have a backup of their DB before they made the 3rd party API announcement. It’s only a year old a fairly “unfucked” with that they could easily train an LLM off of that.

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7 points

Unfortunately, they still have your comments saved in a database somewhere for LLMs to work on.

Why are we calling them AI when they aren’t? Why is AGI now what we’ve been calling AI all this time? Is it all just marketing and did “news” outlets just go with it because it was easier?

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12 points

It’s because language evolves. LLMs aren’t the traditional AI, but we’ve been referring to things like NPCs in video games as AI and all sorts of other decision making trees as AI for so long that we’ve muddied the waters as to the term’s meaning that we needed to get specific with AGI to denote that it would be something different.

It annoys me too, but better to get on board than rail against the current of the ocean.

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2 points

If it’s intelligent and it’s artificial, it’s AI. That’s not even a definition that’s just how adjectives and nouns work.

We bent the definition quite a bit when we waited to apply them only to systems controlling person-like models. We could have put the term on thermostats and automatic transmissions.

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-3 points

That’s literally worse than Hitler. 🤪😄

Point good.

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6 points
*

As someone who studied CS and has followed the field of AI for a long time, you have it backwards. Machine Learning and GPTs like ChatGPT have always fallen under the umbrella of AI. Using “AI” to refer exclusively to AGI is a new trend.

To be a bit combatative here, in my opinion this new definition of “AI” that some people insist on using is either repeated by people who don’t understand the history of the terms, or intentionally spread to mislead people by others who want to win an argument by redefining terms.

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4 points

I’ll keep repeating this until someone answers it: name one task an AGI can do with text input and text output, that an LLM can’t do.

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0 points

Understand it?

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3 points

Unfortunately, they still have your comments saved in a database somewhere for LLMs to work on.

Hmm…I bet they use the text from edits as training data too. Maybe you could poison the results by hooking a edit bot to a random text generator?

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26 points

The short answer is you really can’t.

Reddit Admins and developers have gone on the record multiple times over the last decade and then some, detailing how they specifically save every comment and every edited version.

Replacing your comments with a single SPACE or deleting them does nothing. At least insofar as you frustrating their attempts to sell your comment data.

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7 points

True, but I don’t have to leave my content on the site and searchable to their benefit.

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5 points

I’m sorry to break it to you but there’s no hope.

Reddit admins have gone on the record recently saying that the content from deleted accounts will just be restored at their whim.

You have no chance to survive make your time.

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4 points
Deleted by creator
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3 points

If I overwrite or delete the comments, other users won’t see them. So I won’t be feeding reddit ad traffic with all the content I created for them.

Perhaps they will decide to unedit and undelete my comments, and sure I won’t be able to do anything about that. But I want to at the very least make them put in that effort, if not successfully remove my comments from view.

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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3 points
Deleted by creator
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-1 points

You dont understand. By even being there and commenting, they have your data. You cant just edit it out of existence. They dont go “oh woe is me you replaced the text in your post with gibberish so now we are obligated to replace the copy we already have and cant use it to train AI anymore. Foiled again.”

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1 point

Yes but if I overwrite or delete the comments, other users won’t see them. So I won’t be feeding reddit ad traffic with all the content I created for them.

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25 points

I’m sorry to spoil this to you guys but reddit most likely doesn’t actually delete content when you delete it, it just marks it as deleted and hides it from view

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2 points

Not sure about that. That might be a GDPR violation.

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4 points

They probably actually delete it if you request them to from a country covered by GDPR, but not if you just hit the delete button on your post. This is fairly common.

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1 point

Reddit has already clarified, your account is deleted, but any comments or posts made are left behind unless you remove them manually. The username is removed on each comment and post. The database doesn’t know who it belongs to if you delete your account before doing this. That being said, reddit only tracks the last 1,000 comments you have made. You have to go back and find any additional comments beyond that. Same goes for all other content such as your posts, saved posts from others, comments you upvoted, etc. The internal limit is 1,000. Additionally, the database keeps one revision. So even if you delete it, an admin can restore it if they so desire. The username will be missing of course. The delete counts as a revision state. You first edit your comment with something random, wait 24 hours, and then delete it. If an admin attempts to restore your comment, it will simply be whatever gibberish you put in.

As a result of all this, Reddit is not 100% GDPR compliant.

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2 points

“hides”

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16 points

Power delete suite

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16 points

Cant you just send reddit an email and tell yoi want eveything they have about you deleted? Or is that just eu gdpr thing

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12 points

Can for California too

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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9 points

I’m not sure if just deleting/GDPR an account is enough to get all of their comments removed.

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15 points

It’s supposed to.

A collection of personal opinions are enough to create a personal profile, and are thus protected by GDPR for EU citizens who can withdraw consent for them to be used.

It is also not actually legal for them to change the usage of your protected data before informing you in a clear and concise language, but that part hasn’t been thoroughly litigated yet.

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11 points

Yep, yet discord doesn’t delete messages nor does reddit with comments, they just “anonymise” it, US companies just doesn’t care. Those dumbasses

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