this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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PowerDeleteSuite still works for nuking your Reddit history (github.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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No API required. Kinda slow, but just leave it running overnight if you have a lot. Make sure you run it from https://old.reddit.com/u/me/overview

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

update: turns out PowerDeleteSuite and others can only delete your 1000 most recent comments (a limit set by reddit), but I found something that actually works and does a thorough job.
https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit

There are step-by-step instructions on the page.
I'm running the program in PowerShell with the GDPR option, and it's been nicely chugging away for hours now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

~~I must be an idiot or something because I've been trying to figure out how to use shreddit and after an hour of fiddling with things all I can manage is powershell telling me it can't use "<" or telling me I got the command syntax wrong.~~

~~Maybe the directions assume the user has some knowledge of programming stuff, but I sure as heck don't know it.~~

Edit: I was an idiot...

Edit 2: it's working but I have to babysit it. It stops ~~randomly.~~ after 100 posts without gdpr export

It got all my posts, it's just working for about 2 minutes on my comments before it just stops and I have to re-enter the command.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's strange. It took me a while to figure out as well, but then worked non-stop for an entire day.

This is what I ran:

C:\Users\workPC\Documents\reddit-data\shreddit-windows.exe --username blah --password blah --client-id blah --client-secret blah --gdpr-export-dir C:\Users\workPC\Documents\reddit-data\export_blah_20240225

It's possible reddit is rate limiting you, or the program loses access to the gdpr folder it's pulling the links from (antivirus?). You could try running it from a different path or on a different pc.
I ran the .exe from the same "reddit-data" folder that contained the gdpr files just to be safe with folder permissions and stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So I finally managed to figure it out and let the gdpr run for 3 days.

After day 1 I figured out without the gdpr folder, you can only delete a certain amount, 100 I think.

The rate limit is also set to 30/min (sleep 2s between actions) so I managed to get two instances running at once without hitting the limit.

One gdpr deleting from 2010 onward, one with an auto-typer hitting f3+enter ever 2 minutes 21 seconds to delete from 2023 backward.

Took another 2 days but I managed to delete my old profile. Googling will bring up a few archived posts on other websites, and name mentions but no posts, and the random sampling I did showed nothing when I tried checking on the individual comments.

So it took me a bit to figure out, but I managed.

They definitely assume people have a certain level of knowledge of things when doing the documentation, but luckily it's easy to find information.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Cool, you managed to get it working after all. I never used Power Shell before this either.
It's ridiculous the average user has to jump through all these hoops just to regain control of their own data.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Hey maybe someday there will be a website that just allows you to delete everything they have on you at any time for any reason with only a few clicks and no input on their side...

I can dream!