cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/251752
It is important to note that although this may be a result of Reddit’s UI not displaying the content users posted to now-private subreddits, it remains a problem. Additionally, I agree with the author’s comments in the video description, as it appears strategically unrealistic for Reddit to ask that users manually delete the content themselves.
This is particularly true when considering that many automated methods to accomplish this task will be hindered by Reddit’s upcoming API pricing changes. Furthermore, Reddit has demonstrated a recurring pattern of rolling back databases using historical backups, thereby disregarding user deletion requests that were submitted prior to the database rollback.
See similar discussion of this video on Hacker News:
Disclaimer: not defending reddit here at all, just sharing my understanding as someone who has dealt with forums and GDPR. Also, I am not a lawyer and everything I write here might be wrong.
According to some readings of the GDPR, reddit is absolutely correct in not automatically deleting all posts when deleting an account. This comes down to a few reasons (note that I use post and comment interchangably):
All in all that gives a platform’s owner the right to go the minimum effort route and only delete the account while leaving the comments intact (but now no longer linked to a username). If the user wants their comments deleted or censored, they have to do it themselves.
Now, restoring comments that the user has deleted seems like something that may be worth reporting to your local privacy protection agency. I’m not sure if there are edge cases if the user deletes “too much” (from the platform owner’s point of view), triggering my third point but overall I would assume that a user should be able to expect that manually deleted comments are gone forever unless explicitly stated otherwise.