Not necessarily deletion, anonymization would free your info from any GDPR requirements and Reddit couldn't care less if your username is there or not

Ah yes, the "Right to be forgotten"

You are correct, of course. However, they are well within their rights to not delete your data. Look up "Legitimate interest" - it's a huge GDPR loophole and widely abused. (Certainly in charity fundraising in which I used to work)

The LI can be for their own business purposes, including profiling, machine learning and of course, advertising.

It can also, and usually is, need to keep data in case they receive a legal order to provide it. In the event of Reddit being used for terrorism purposes (which I'm sure it has, along with every other messaging platform), they will be required to produce that information. Which they can't if it's gone.

We wave the GDPR around like it solves all our problems. And whilst it does add a huge amount of public protection and it's impressive it made it into law given those objecting to it, it does not give you the right to your own data above all else.

Whilst I totally understand your comments and even appreciate them, I still believe I am right.

About four years ago I used NukeReddit - a similar script that loads your comment history, edits each posts, replaces the text with nonsense and saves it. Then deletes the post. I did that because someone got close to identifying me IRL and I didn't want them to, and wanted to tidy up my own data leakage.

After that, I continued using Reddit until the recent nonsense when I decided to leave to good. First, I used Power Delete, repeating it over several days to delete thousands of comments and hundreds of posts. About a week after that, I submitted a GDPR data request. Another week, I deleted my account. About a week after /that/, I received the GDPR response containing several CSV files containing my data. That included posts and comments I'd made from 11 years ago when I had created that account.

That data had survived two quite thorough scrubs and deletions, and whilst I no longer have access to that account, I believe my data and my account are still there - just unavailable to me.

I do know a little about data and databases, and in many mature projects, deleting posts simply sets an is_deleted column with the date it's deleted. Editing a message simply creates a copy of that message, sets the original as is_deleted with a date, and sets the copy with the edited text. That's standard and honestly, I don't know why Reddit would not do that.

Also consider that Reddit may be under a legal obligation NOT to delete data. If there is a criminal investigation at a later date, they will need to be able to provide that information. "Sorry Mr Government, we deleted Bin Laden's posts where he incited terrorism to dozens of other suspects" is not going to be received well.

The bottom line is that only Reddit architects will know for certain, but I'd put real money on betting that I'm right.#