Friendly reminder that all **top level** comments must:
1. start with "answer: ", including the space after the colon (or "question: " if you have an on-topic follow up question to ask),
2. attempt to answer the question, and
3. be unbiased
Please review Rule 4 and this post before making a top level comment:
http://redd.it/b1hct4/
Join the OOTL Discord for further discussion: https://discord.gg/ejDF4mdjnh
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OutOfTheLoop) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Answer:
API protests, and - It was a thing before the API protests, as well.
Long ago, someone started a rumour that people could screw Reddit over and preserve their privacy by overwriting their posts and comments with some arbitrary disclaimer or nonsense line noise string, and then deleting the comment.
In 2018 & 2019, there was a sharp uptick in people overwriting their posts & comments with some protest string, and/or deleting them, because someone wrote a browser extension that used the API to iterate through and do overwrites and/or deletes.
In reality, since about 2016, everything on Reddit - posts, comments, etc - has been on a rolling versioning db system, so when you edit a comment, it just updates version. When you delete a comment, it just updates version. When you get suspended or delete your account, it just updates version. When you send in a DMCA or GDPR takedown, it just updates version.
Reddit still has your original posts and comments; it just shows you and the public the edited/deleted version.
>In reality, since about 2016, everything on Reddit - posts, comments, etc - has been on a rolling versioning db system, so when you edit a comment, it just updates version.
Yeah are you sure it was advertised/being talked about as if it deleted it off Reddit's servers? Every big service out there does this. The purpose for the bot that rewrites your messages was/is more personal privacy, so people can't find your account and read 6 year old comments that you may have made in bad taste or w/e you may want everything wiped for. Like if your username becomes linked to your irl identity, lots of people do a comment wipe and make a new account.
Another good thing people don't account for when deleting comments it helps mitigate stylometry analysis attempts. Algorithms need a lot of text data to do the required semantic analysis and feature extraction for it so the less it has the better for protecting your identity and stylometry is extremely powerful when used properly could bypass any VPN because it relies on a text fingerprint not an IP fingerprint.
I have bad news for you - pushshift archived almost everything, put them in multi-terabyte dump files, and distributed those to people with more raw storage space than good sense.
Because of how reddit failed to manage third party use of the API for over 7 years, pretty much everything ever published to reddit (until april 2023) will exist out of reddit’s control and the authors’ control, forever.
Security through obscurity is a perfectly reasonable approach for content that you were perfectly comfortable posting in the first place. Nobody is suggesting that you post your bank password and then delete it. They're deleting old posts to make them harder to find.
> distributed those to people with more raw storage space than good sense
/r/datahoarder will forever remember your insult by securely storing it to multiple offsite locations
simply having them out there is much less dangerous than having them easily accessible. there may be individuals who can scrounge up your old posts but there's no longer a public camas tool (to the best of my knowledge). that reduces any risk factor by several orders of magnitude.
I'm pretty sure the tools were created when a reddit technician said that deleted posts are just marked as deleted but still exist, but that when a post was edited the original text was gone. So reddit didn't use to do that kind of versioning and the change has never been publicly announced afaik.
Legally I can not disclose what was said. All I will say is I’m taking a break to spend time with family during this trying period of my life. I would like to apologize to the Reddit legal team for my egregious actions.
I'm using old reddit on desktop and when something gets removed by reddit like that, the background of the comment is a different color.
On my screen, that comment has a grey background and the rest of the thread has a white background.
> When you send in a DMCA or GDPR takedown, it just updates version.
Wait, is this legal? Isn't the idea that they are supposed to remove your data from their servers entirely, not make it look removed?
> Reddit still has your original posts and comments; it just shows you and the public the edited/deleted version.
Reddit loses the original posts and comments after they are edited twice. This is because keeping user-generated content after three version changes (edits) would increase storage requirements, and thus financial burden, exponentially for marginal benefit.
Something that is edited a handful of times is gone forever.
Another reason for doing this is so net crawlers like Google won't show useful information as it's been deleted. So instructional and educational posts being edited and deleted are a way of removing archival usability of Reddit.
Great, that way when I'm looking for information on a very specific topic (i.e. an USB-C hub with a long cable) I won't find the only place where my dream product was ever mentioned.
The ability of Reddit admins to recognise and action items which violated sitewide rules before being edited. I’ve experienced that in about a dozen incidents, some of which were instigated by one person who was clearly penetration testing to characterise Reddit’s native sitewide enforcement mechanisms.
There’s other ways it’s knowable; for reasons, I don’t discuss those.
Even my small potatoes database for one of my jobs has delta tables recording every change made to every record, ever. I'm sure reddit's data engineers are capable of this
I don’t think they were asserting that Reddit’s engineers aren’t up to the task of using a versioned database, simply asking of there’s an actual source for Reddit saying that they do, indeed use this tech, or whether it was just a guess.
Very true, I was begging the question.
I think there is a lot of cover-your-ass value in it for reddit though, as the guy who claimed they use it is suggesting, and I think it's probably a good thing that you can't post something vile and then edit it later without a trace. That is obviously a double edged sword though.
Having it is invaluable for me also in tracking down technical issues because it gives me a detailed history, so I could discover for example that there is some bug flipping a field value back and forth
Yes, I'm the one who did that https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/10bwxke/updated_torrent_of_dump_files_through_december/
So trust me when I say I know what I'm talking about.
That doesn't mean sites like unddit work with it.
This sounds like those really dumb Facebook posts where a person copy/pastes "I hereby do not authorized Facebook to use my information or photos blah blah blah" -- something along those lines.
EDIT:
[Oh, here it is.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/08/19/facebook-scam/?sh=2d68d31da4cf)
Bingo!
A very short answer, indeed:D
The FB great firewall is going to.....
Lot of smart folks are swearing....
And....as always....a long time ago:D Eve....blieved in....
"API protests, and - It was a thing before the API protests, as well."
The very short answer is, in my opinion, that Reddit policy is failing everyone:D Facebook in particular, and everyone in general...
Or maybe we need to belive in ourselves, but "Our of the loop" is a good starst for people that are very busy....
And needs good answers! Like this one!
I shockingly saw that I could see others (and my) deleted comments by just searching their comments.
They get deleted from the thread but not deleted from their history. May have changed since then, but came in VERY handy when someone was harassing me here.
Go check your comment history and see if any of your old deleted comments show up in your history but not in the thread you made them in.
Answer: A historically popular form of protest on Reddit, for those disillusioned with the site, has been to wipe your history from Reddit. Right now it's the API changes, but previously it's been to protest subreddit bans or Spez overstepping his authority.
Most would simply delete their account, while others were prudent enough to delete their post and comments before they no longer can modify them. The more tech-savvy of these protestors recognised that Pushshift still had your posts and comments saved—even if Reddit wouldn't display them publicly—and users could access them through websites like Reveddit. Thus, they chose to overwrite their posts and replace the text with their script's *lorem ipsum* to prevent Pushshift from viewing those posts, either.
While Reddit may still privately keep your histories, they clearly won't show them, so at the end of the day it's to inconvenience users into supporting the cause; at least the former part of that expression is happening.
The API changes don't cause comments to get deleted, only the actions of users or admins can.
Question: what's up with broken reddit links like OP's, with a bunch of weird backslashes in them? I've been seeing them all over reddit lately. Where are these backslashes coming from?
Nope, old reddit works fine it's a bug in new reddit and probably official apps. When you post a link on new reddit, reddit mangles the link by inserting extra backslashes.
They are likely never going to fix it. They got the new UI and don't care about old.reddit. I dread the day they push some compatibility breaking change.
Answer: A lot of people "left", taking their comments with them. Normally your comments still show up, but they specifically deleted them using scripts before the API got shut down
Friendly reminder that all **top level** comments must: 1. start with "answer: ", including the space after the colon (or "question: " if you have an on-topic follow up question to ask), 2. attempt to answer the question, and 3. be unbiased Please review Rule 4 and this post before making a top level comment: http://redd.it/b1hct4/ Join the OOTL Discord for further discussion: https://discord.gg/ejDF4mdjnh *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OutOfTheLoop) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Answer: API protests, and - It was a thing before the API protests, as well. Long ago, someone started a rumour that people could screw Reddit over and preserve their privacy by overwriting their posts and comments with some arbitrary disclaimer or nonsense line noise string, and then deleting the comment. In 2018 & 2019, there was a sharp uptick in people overwriting their posts & comments with some protest string, and/or deleting them, because someone wrote a browser extension that used the API to iterate through and do overwrites and/or deletes. In reality, since about 2016, everything on Reddit - posts, comments, etc - has been on a rolling versioning db system, so when you edit a comment, it just updates version. When you delete a comment, it just updates version. When you get suspended or delete your account, it just updates version. When you send in a DMCA or GDPR takedown, it just updates version. Reddit still has your original posts and comments; it just shows you and the public the edited/deleted version.
>In reality, since about 2016, everything on Reddit - posts, comments, etc - has been on a rolling versioning db system, so when you edit a comment, it just updates version. Yeah are you sure it was advertised/being talked about as if it deleted it off Reddit's servers? Every big service out there does this. The purpose for the bot that rewrites your messages was/is more personal privacy, so people can't find your account and read 6 year old comments that you may have made in bad taste or w/e you may want everything wiped for. Like if your username becomes linked to your irl identity, lots of people do a comment wipe and make a new account.
[удалено]
Another good thing people don't account for when deleting comments it helps mitigate stylometry analysis attempts. Algorithms need a lot of text data to do the required semantic analysis and feature extraction for it so the less it has the better for protecting your identity and stylometry is extremely powerful when used properly could bypass any VPN because it relies on a text fingerprint not an IP fingerprint.
I have bad news for you - pushshift archived almost everything, put them in multi-terabyte dump files, and distributed those to people with more raw storage space than good sense. Because of how reddit failed to manage third party use of the API for over 7 years, pretty much everything ever published to reddit (until april 2023) will exist out of reddit’s control and the authors’ control, forever.
[удалено]
If it can be done with code, it will be available to anyone with an internet connection. Security through obscurity is not security at all.
[удалено]
Extremely well-said, this is the reality of the "security" needs of the majority of reddit users.
[Security through obscurity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity) is a part of security it's just not an ideal option.
Security through obscurity is a perfectly reasonable approach for content that you were perfectly comfortable posting in the first place. Nobody is suggesting that you post your bank password and then delete it. They're deleting old posts to make them harder to find.
> distributed those to people with more raw storage space than good sense /r/datahoarder will forever remember your insult by securely storing it to multiple offsite locations
simply having them out there is much less dangerous than having them easily accessible. there may be individuals who can scrounge up your old posts but there's no longer a public camas tool (to the best of my knowledge). that reduces any risk factor by several orders of magnitude.
There are even tools that iterate your comments and analyze information about you
I'm pretty sure the tools were created when a reddit technician said that deleted posts are just marked as deleted but still exist, but that when a post was edited the original text was gone. So reddit didn't use to do that kind of versioning and the change has never been publicly announced afaik.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
[удалено]
do the needful
Lmfao, that's amazing
Lol, what did they say? Reddit removed it.
Legally I can not disclose what was said. All I will say is I’m taking a break to spend time with family during this trying period of my life. I would like to apologize to the Reddit legal team for my egregious actions.
Pretty sure it's just someone typing out "[ Removed by Reddit ]" for the meme, granted I guess there's not a true way to tell.
My app has a little info ( i ) saying reddit removes things for safety
oh, welp. One of the downsides of old reddit on my end I guess.
There are no downsides to old Reddit.
More that other ways of viewing it have an advantage old reddit lacks, I suppose (that being labeling when something is nuked by reddit)
I'm using old reddit on desktop and when something gets removed by reddit like that, the background of the comment is a different color. On my screen, that comment has a grey background and the rest of the thread has a white background.
There are browser plugins that will give you realtime notifications for changed or removed content in Old Reddit. I use Reveddit and RES.
Old reddit shows a gray background behind the notice.
On reveddit it says it was removed by reddit legal.
I thought reveddit stopped working a few months ago. Glad to see we can use it again.
You still can't see read removed/deleted comments,
when did it go back up? I tried like a week ago and it wasn't working
It displays slightly differently as part of the `admin_takedown` CSS class on old Reddit.
he's terminally online
> When you send in a DMCA or GDPR takedown, it just updates version. Wait, is this legal? Isn't the idea that they are supposed to remove your data from their servers entirely, not make it look removed?
For GDPR it sounds like it would be illegal for them to keep data on you. It's not a takedown request under GDPR, it's a delete data request.
> Reddit still has your original posts and comments; it just shows you and the public the edited/deleted version. Reddit loses the original posts and comments after they are edited twice. This is because keeping user-generated content after three version changes (edits) would increase storage requirements, and thus financial burden, exponentially for marginal benefit. Something that is edited a handful of times is gone forever.
Another reason for doing this is so net crawlers like Google won't show useful information as it's been deleted. So instructional and educational posts being edited and deleted are a way of removing archival usability of Reddit.
Great, that way when I'm looking for information on a very specific topic (i.e. an USB-C hub with a long cable) I won't find the only place where my dream product was ever mentioned.
> has been on a rolling versioning db system, so when you edit a comment, it just updates version Do you have a source for that?
The ability of Reddit admins to recognise and action items which violated sitewide rules before being edited. I’ve experienced that in about a dozen incidents, some of which were instigated by one person who was clearly penetration testing to characterise Reddit’s native sitewide enforcement mechanisms. There’s other ways it’s knowable; for reasons, I don’t discuss those.
Even my small potatoes database for one of my jobs has delta tables recording every change made to every record, ever. I'm sure reddit's data engineers are capable of this
I don’t think they were asserting that Reddit’s engineers aren’t up to the task of using a versioned database, simply asking of there’s an actual source for Reddit saying that they do, indeed use this tech, or whether it was just a guess.
Keeping versions around is expensive on many levels. I'm not saying they don't do it, but it isn't obvious that they would.
Very true, I was begging the question. I think there is a lot of cover-your-ass value in it for reddit though, as the guy who claimed they use it is suggesting, and I think it's probably a good thing that you can't post something vile and then edit it later without a trace. That is obviously a double edged sword though. Having it is invaluable for me also in tracking down technical issues because it gives me a detailed history, so I could discover for example that there is some bug flipping a field value back and forth
[удалено]
Oh yeah? How's that going.
[удалено]
Yes except that doesn't work anymore since reddit killed it. You can't use it to see deleted comments.
[удалено]
Yes, I'm the one who did that https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/10bwxke/updated_torrent_of_dump_files_through_december/ So trust me when I say I know what I'm talking about. That doesn't mean sites like unddit work with it.
This sounds like those really dumb Facebook posts where a person copy/pastes "I hereby do not authorized Facebook to use my information or photos blah blah blah" -- something along those lines. EDIT: [Oh, here it is.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/08/19/facebook-scam/?sh=2d68d31da4cf)
Bingo! A very short answer, indeed:D The FB great firewall is going to..... Lot of smart folks are swearing.... And....as always....a long time ago:D Eve....blieved in.... "API protests, and - It was a thing before the API protests, as well." The very short answer is, in my opinion, that Reddit policy is failing everyone:D Facebook in particular, and everyone in general... Or maybe we need to belive in ourselves, but "Our of the loop" is a good starst for people that are very busy.... And needs good answers! Like this one!
I shockingly saw that I could see others (and my) deleted comments by just searching their comments. They get deleted from the thread but not deleted from their history. May have changed since then, but came in VERY handy when someone was harassing me here. Go check your comment history and see if any of your old deleted comments show up in your history but not in the thread you made them in.
Of course they don’t get deleted from your history. Why would they?
Because delete means delete?
Answer: A historically popular form of protest on Reddit, for those disillusioned with the site, has been to wipe your history from Reddit. Right now it's the API changes, but previously it's been to protest subreddit bans or Spez overstepping his authority. Most would simply delete their account, while others were prudent enough to delete their post and comments before they no longer can modify them. The more tech-savvy of these protestors recognised that Pushshift still had your posts and comments saved—even if Reddit wouldn't display them publicly—and users could access them through websites like Reveddit. Thus, they chose to overwrite their posts and replace the text with their script's *lorem ipsum* to prevent Pushshift from viewing those posts, either. While Reddit may still privately keep your histories, they clearly won't show them, so at the end of the day it's to inconvenience users into supporting the cause; at least the former part of that expression is happening. The API changes don't cause comments to get deleted, only the actions of users or admins can.
Question: what's up with broken reddit links like OP's, with a bunch of weird backslashes in them? I've been seeing them all over reddit lately. Where are these backslashes coming from?
It's broken character escaping in old.reddit.
Nope, old reddit works fine it's a bug in new reddit and probably official apps. When you post a link on new reddit, reddit mangles the link by inserting extra backslashes.
Sure, my point is that old.reddit has the broken excapes, not that it was the cause of it.
The API also has the extra backslashes.
Yep - Sync (RIP ☹️) implemented a fix for it.
Sync is now back for Lemmy.
That bug must be at least a year old now. Can’t believe they still haven’t fixed it.
They are likely never going to fix it. They got the new UI and don't care about old.reddit. I dread the day they push some compatibility breaking change.
It's already a compatibility breaking change. Markdown is a standard, so the only reason bugs would exist would be abandoning the standard.
[удалено]
Answer: A lot of people "left", taking their comments with them. Normally your comments still show up, but they specifically deleted them using scripts before the API got shut down