reddit restoring and orphaning comments from profile

[quixotic120]

unsure if there even is a fix/workaround for this but wanted to notify others either way

reddit is restoring comments deleted with the tool and orphaning them from the user overview

using my account as an example: i have deleted my account with powerdeletesuite 3 times. I deleted once before the blackout and my account was fully restored. deleted again after the blackout died down. and it was restored again. deleted a third time and the content was restored but orphaned. every few hours an ancient post or comment pops onto my history so not sure if this some long batch thing or whatever

evidence: https://old.reddit.com/user/quixotic120/ - my overview, which as of right now shows "there doesnt seem to be anything here"

screenshot of relevant portion of overview

however, if you google "[my username] reddit" you'll find a ton of comments and posts have been restored, relevant posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/drums/comments/v0mvu8/comment/iaqchl5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/v1wclw/comment/iapy1k3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/edrums/comments/twh1pm/comment/i3fd313/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

and there are tons more, just going off the google results at least a few dozen but i got tired of hitting more results. I can still edit and delete the posts if I access them here.

Since I still can access them, edit them, and delete them, is it possible to modify the script to pull these orphaned comments in? I'm assuming that is not possible.

either way FYI to users reddit is restoring mass deleted comments and posts in a way that makes them very difficult to mass delete and possibly breaking this and all other tools. I also tried shreddit and redact and both could not find the orphaned comments/posts to delete as well. I have reached out to reddit support for clarification on why this is occurring but do not expect much from them at this point.

[vindicatorr]

I was hearing about that as well. I'm also wondering if this will work with suspended accounts too.

I had an account falsely permanently suspended by admin recently. I think it may have been due to my encounter with a mod, and they used their pull with admin. I inadvertently also exposed a flaw in the "comment-lock" system when dealing with that mod. They tried locking the comments so I couldn't edit them. But even then I use "EDIT#:" when making edits, so it's abundantly clear. It's normally to add more info or include things for clarity or spelling/grammar, rather than just making another comment. I do this everywhere (including github). I NEVER alter the underlying message/meaning of the original comment/post. It was funny because the mod said they wouldn't delete the thread, but did so anyway. I expect the mod/admin went fishing for anything that could remotely look like it violated terms even if it technically did not.

So because of that and the API changes, I'm looking to remove any post/comments of mine so reddit no longer has material others can find useful (I'd still like to provide the info, but not let reddit benefit from it).

I'd look into altering these scripts in the repository to alter the messages with gibberish (or chatgpt) if I can't delete them. I haven't looked into the details of this project, but maybe you could try testing by deleting one or a few posts/comments, then see if they get restored, then continue with that over a period of time. Just don't trigger anything on their end that makes them think the actions are suspect and roll it all back. I'd think there'd only be a short timeframe they'd have for a backup before that backup is overwritten.

Frankly, I'd think there'd be a law about the use of our content, and if we wanted to revoke permission, we ought to be able to.

EDIT0: Welp, here's a good example of an "edit" that I'd do. I just came across https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/14dcxy4/comment/joqpj4u/ which is admin addressing the "perceived"(?) rollbacks. Someone mentioned the GDPR law, so that may be something easier to look into.

[dsl101]

I've been editing (not deleting) comments, and after 2 full passes, I can still see some of my original comments via old.reddit.com. Not sure exactly if the edits are happening too fast and being rejected, being restored after edit, or just randomly failing but by then the script has moved on. It would be great to get a log of what the script thinks happened to each comment, in order to verify whether the edit 'sticks'.

[dsl101]

By way of an update, I downloaded all my comments, and 28 remained as original, not edited. I ran the edit function again and waited until it had finished, then downloaded again. This time 19 remain as original. So it seems like it's gradually getting there, but even though there were no errors reported, some edits fail to stick...

[0bron]

Just ran PDS on my profile, opting to delete posts and edit comments. It only seems to have caught about 1/4 of my comments. It's possible they were cached and will change to my edited posts as the CDN gets updated. But I'll run the script a few more times to make sure. I have 15 years of comments to get through.

FYI my post edit contains links to the top Reddit alternatives. ::evil grin::

[0bron]

Update: I've been informed that Reddit has enforced a 5-second timeout between comment edits. There's a fork of PDS that works with the timeout: https://github.com/pkolyvas/PowerDeleteSuite

[TheMrRandomDude]

@dsl101 > By way of an update, I downloaded all my comments

Hiya! Sorry, could you just clarify how you downloaded all your comments? I am deciding right now between PDS, shreddit or something else, seems like PDS is the most recent and through and well made one. Right now I'm waiting for the data request to be fulfilled, but it will take them too long as I requested too late. Not sure if it's possible to get all data in time now.

[0bron]

clarify how you downloaded all your comments

It's a checkbox when you run PDS, "Prepare local backup of items". It will give you a CSV of all of your posts and comments when complete.

[dsl101]

There is definitely some kind of restore going on though—I'd got down to 9 comments having their original text, and today there are 13. Hmm.

[TheMrRandomDude]

There is definitely some kind of restore going on though—I'd got down to 9 comments having their original text, and today there are 13. Hmm.

Damn. That sucks honestly. Hopefully it will calm down in the future. Not even sure if PDS will even work as intended after API changes. It should.

[zloveless]

I've caught reddit twice restoring deleted comments I had deleted. Once 3 days ago when I saw this thread/issue report and today just now restoring about a dozen comments from a year ago. However, it's only on my main (10+ year old) account. It's seemingly selective, possibly prioritizing more active accounts for content restoring.

The first time, I was editing all the comments so that may have been a factor given the other reports here. This time, I'm just mass-deleting without editing. I'll report back if there's any issues.

[TheMrRandomDude]

Sorry for a little bit irrelevant question to this topic, but I didn't feel it needed a new issue to be opened.

The upcoming API changes shouldn't change how PDS works, right? Also, is there a way to use our existing data request from reddit to aid PDS? Since I noticed it actually didn't get all of my comments, it missed over a few hundred.

[supermarkert]

I used PDS to delete all my comments last week, and this week every comment was restored (still associated with my profile).

[dsl101]

For the record, after a while (a few days), all my comments showed up as I'd edited them. I didn't delete them though.

In my case, I'm wondering if it was distributed database updates that caused them sometimes to appear as edited and sometimes as original.

[TheMrRandomDude]

@dsl101 So if you delete them, they come back, but if you first edit them very slowly, they stay edited?

[dsl101]

I haven't tried deleting them. What I did notice was that after a full 'edit', I then downloded my comments, and some random subset (anywhere between 9 and 28) were as original, not edited. I re-ran PDS a few times, and never got all my comments to come back as edited.

But after doing nothing for several days, the download showed them all as edited. So I'm wondering if it just took time for the edits to replicate to all corners of the database.

[TheMrRandomDude]

I see, yep that makes sense. Smartest option then would be to first wait for data request, edit everything very slowly, then wait a few days, then edit again, wait again and edit again. Then start deleting, then delete once again if they come back, then data request again to verify and that's it!

[supermarkert]

Upon further review, only my last a random set of 152 comments were restored. So now I'm using the https://github.com/pkolyvas/PowerDeleteSuite fork to just edit them, which includes 5 second delay between edits.

[DarrenPIngram]

I must be lucky as [touch wood] nothing has came back with PDS deletions from before the exodus and with recent smaller deletes.

But still, [expletive]/u/Spez. What a way to destroy a once great community. And thank you to the PDS developer and all those working on forks, fixes and the like.

It shouldn't be necessary, but still, sigh.

On Thu, 29 Jun 2023 at 17:45, supermarkert @.***> wrote:

Upon further review, only my last 152 comments were restored. So now I'm using the https://github.com/pkolyvas/PowerDeleteSuite fork to just edit them, which includes 5 second delay between edits.

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