I've seen this graphic and as much as I would love to do this with every single one of my Reddit accounts if it truly cost them money, it is not plausible that it would cost them all that much money and I have yet to see any evidence of it costing them that much money. Only conjecure about how someone not connected to Reddit thinks it will cost them money. They are a software company, and as a software enginer (Reddit have a lot of those), it would be child's play for me to automate these requests and since the function exists as a result of GDPR regulations, they almost definitely had a system in place to do it.
But I would love to be corrected with evidence, do that and I will submit the requests myself.
In theory you could wait for evidence that this costs them time and effort, or you could do it proactively. In the situation where it doesn't cost that much, it doesn't cost you much because it's literally two buttons. In the situation where it costs them time and effort, well that's the goal so awesome.
As someone who works as a software developer, I know that not all "automation" is created equal, or set up correctly, or "fully" automated. Considering they give themselves 7 days to do it, they are likely responding in a ticket queue of some sort, so even if it's not super time consuming, there likely is manual intervention somewhere.
It's two buttons on our side. It's worth it to me. Also, this way I can copy down my history somewhere off Reddit, so that I can search it myself without going back there.
I don't think it costs them money out right but i think they're backend is hosted at aws. All these requests need processing power. That's where the increase in cost to them comes from.
I think they took down the data request page because it was being over run.
I submitted a help ticket for a data request. We'll see if I ever get a response or if they'll try to shirk the legal burden.
If they did take that down then they are definitely violating GDPR, as well as California's privacy rights. Really isn't a great look for them, especially financially since those fines can really hurt.
At least it wastes their time / processing power, so it's still a win in my book. I still deleted most of my content manually already and plan to continue until the account is fully nuked, THEN quit and close the account permanently.
If you mean, does it delete your data... Not exactly. IIRC when you delete your account it disassociates your comments and your screen name (e.g. your comments remain but it shows as [deleted] instead of your s/n). But doesn't actually "delete" your data. What I mean is that in their databases, likely they still retain your email address/screen name/ip address/browsing history/etc, even if you take the time to delete comments and posts before you delete the account.
But more importantly, I don't believe that OP is entirely correct (last line is wrong) either. Doing this just requests a report on what data they have about you. It does not say anywhere that they will get rid of the data. As to whether or not you can request the report after deleting your account... I have no idea. Possibly but I would imagine they would make the excuse to say they can't though.
Sorry for the stupid question but what exactly does this do? I haven't logged on reddit since the blackout and would like to totally wipe my account but not sure what's the best way.
Pretty sure the last line of image is not correct anyway: AFAIK doing this doesn't wipe your data; it requests Reddit to compile a report on all the data they have on you. It does still waste time of the employees, which spez/Reddit ultimately have to pay for... But doesn't do fuckall for removing data unfortunately. At least that was the impression I got from reading their page on it and googling.
Would love if it did... I already deleted all my comments and posts (the hard way... over the course of many bathroom breaks) but I still don't like them having ip logs and browsing history which I can guarantee you that they keep. And AFAIK they are under no legal obligation to delete that kind of data, especially for users in the US, but I think even for Europe, ip address/email/browsing history/screen name would not be considered as personal identifying information (pii) in most cases and probably no way to force them to get rid of it, unless you're some kind of 1337 h4x0r dude.
I can help you if you want. I suggest using Power Delete Suite to first overwrite and then delete your history, and then making the suggested data request.