this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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Privacy
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I really need to get around to wiping my old content from Reddit. Much like Facebook, I just ignored it when I was done with the platform.
I'm skeptical that actually deletes it. Seems trivial for them to have backups if the plan is to sell our old content.
I'm skeptical too.
Lots of software is designed so the delete button just flags an entry so it doesn't show to low privilege users on the front end, while the data persists in the database where database admins and the like can still access it.
Online it's wise to assume every website acts like this if you don't actually run the site yourself with full admin access to the underlying web server and database . Once what you write gets on a site it is permanently out of your control in most cases.
Yeah... I'm like 99% positive Reddit wisened up to scrubbing and have been preserving backups for years, essentially rendering all forms of update/deletion useless.
All they'd have to do is have a separate "hidden" db that mirrors production, with separate business rules to ignore all non-mod updates/deletions beyond 12 or 24 hours.
The best you can do now is stop giving them content.
I also wouldn't be surprised if even the automated processes that edit your comment to be gibberish even accomplishes that. Text is, in the software world, remarkably cheap to store, even at volume. It also compresses easily, is remarkably easy to tie to version control mechanisms, and with reddit's comment system can easily be structured as a part of an existing dialogue tree. They know people are pissed at them and are looking to nuke their comment history, so I wouldn't be surprised if they already have multiple cold storage backups of reddit's entire site comment history over the course of months or years. Right now, that data is the most valuable thing they have, their reputation as the "front page of the internet" be damned.