How do I delete/overwrite my reddit posts without paying $20 for shreddit?

I used Power Delete Suite about a month or so ago, it's foss and it worked great.

I set it to delete each comment, but in case Reddit tries to "roll back" my deletes I also set it to manually edit and save every comment to something (ex. "comment removed"), before doing the delete. It took a good hour to get through all my comments.

I also decided not to delete my 15yo account. My logic here was perhaps that will be a protection from Reddit resurrecting my comments or account in some way, since it's still an active account. It just sits there empty now.

Unfortunately, they still have your comments saved in a database somewhere for LLMs to work on.

Why are we calling them AI when they aren't? Why is AGI now what we've been calling AI all this time? Is it all just marketing and did "news" outlets just go with it because it was easier?
- It’s because language evolves. LLMs aren’t the traditional AI, but we’ve been referring to things like NPCs in video games as AI and all sorts of other decision making trees as AI for so long that we’ve muddied the waters as to the term’s meaning that we needed to get specific with AGI to denote that it would be something different.
  
  It annoys me too, but better to get on board than rail against the current of the ocean.
- As someone who studied CS and has followed the field of AI for a long time, you have it backwards. Machine Learning and GPTs like ChatGPT have always fallen under the umbrella of AI. Using "AI" to refer exclusively to AGI is a new trend.
  
  To be a bit combatative here, in my opinion this new definition of "AI" that some people insist on using is either repeated by people who don't understand the history of the terms, or intentionally spread to mislead people by others who want to win an argument by redefining terms.
- Unfortunately, they still have your comments saved in a database somewhere for LLMs to work on.
  
  Hmm...I bet they use the text from edits as training data too. Maybe you could poison the results by hooking a edit bot to a random text generator?
I deleted my ancient accounts a while ago. Let them have my random comments and snide jokes. Any LLM trained against my account would get decommed quickly
- I’m fairly certain they have a backup of their DB before they made the 3rd party API announcement. It’s only a year old a fairly “unfucked” with that they could easily train an LLM off of that.

The short answer is you really can't.

Reddit Admins and developers have gone on the record multiple times over the last decade and then some, detailing how they specifically save every comment and every edited version.

Replacing your comments with a single SPACE or deleting them does nothing. At least insofar as you frustrating their attempts to sell your comment data.

True, but I don't have to leave my content on the site and searchable to their benefit.
- I'm sorry to break it to you but there's no hope.
  
  Reddit admins have gone on the record recently saying that the content from deleted accounts will just be restored at their whim.
  
  You have no chance to survive make your time.
- You dont understand. By even being there and commenting, they have your data. You cant just edit it out of existence. They dont go "oh woe is me you replaced the text in your post with gibberish so now we are obligated to replace the copy we already have and cant use it to train AI anymore. Foiled again."

I'm sorry to spoil this to you guys but reddit most likely doesn't actually delete content when you delete it, it just marks it as deleted and hides it from view

Not sure about that. That might be a GDPR violation.
- They probably actually delete it if you request them to from a country covered by GDPR, but not if you just hit the delete button on your post. This is fairly common.
"hides"

Power delete suite

Cant you just send reddit an email and tell yoi want eveything they have about you deleted? Or is that just eu gdpr thing

Can for California too
I'm not sure if just deleting/GDPR an account is enough to get all of their comments removed.
- It's supposed to.
  
  A collection of personal opinions are enough to create a personal profile, and are thus protected by GDPR for EU citizens who can withdraw consent for them to be used.
  
  It is also not actually legal for them to change the usage of your protected data before informing you in a clear and concise language, but that part hasn't been thoroughly litigated yet.

It is too late. They have your data and arent going to brainlessly overwrite it with gibberish just because you used a shredder. They're not brain damaged.

If I overwrite or delete the comments, other users won't see them. So I won't be feeding reddit ad traffic with all the content I created for them.

Perhaps they will decide to unedit and undelete my comments, and sure I won't be able to do anything about that. But I want to at the very least make them put in that effort, if not successfully remove my comments from view.
- If I was a Reddit admin and wanted to highlight the more interesting posts/comments on a private backend, one of the strategies I'd use is to highlight every deleted post and especially highlight any edited post where the edit doesn't include most of the original comment. It would just be a part of the delete/edit procedure on the SQL server, which means it can even be transparent to most of the devs if the stored procedure code isn't visible.

I really hope you find something but I'd like to just add my own personal experience. I forget the pluggin I used but it rewrote everything and then deleted it. I searched shortly after for something I had posted and something I commented and was able to find them through Google. Clicked the link and it highlighted my comment and if I clicked my username it did say [DELETED]. Recently I rechecked my account and all of my content was restored.

Same for me

https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit

Ive use this and it works great

Wait, if I delete my reddit account, do my comments still exist?

I've forgotten how reddit works since last summer

Your comments will still exist even if you delete your account. Your username will just show "deleted" but the comment still exists. You need to edit or manually delete the comments if you want them removed.
Yep. Do you remember seeing comments/posts where the username is listed as [deleted]?

If you haven’t deleted your account yet, you can edit your posts to be blank/spam, then delete your account. If you deleted your account it’s too late to edit your comments.

That being said, if reddit is concerned with keeping old comments to sell for AI training, I’m not sure this will stop them. This will stop other visitors to reddit from reading what you wrote, though.

I didn’t need to do this (I rarely posted) so I have no recommendation for tools to help, sorry.
Yes, unless they've recently changed something. Folks will see something like [deleted] for your username, but the text is still there. And indexable by exploitative AI companies. And indexable by exploitative ad companies.

Worse, you, having deleted your account, no longer control those posts and comments and can no longer affect their fate.

What AI thing ?

Reddit selling user comments/posts to AI companies
- Im confused as to why thats not triggering a mass exodus from reddit?

Ah thanks

This may be useful: https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/comment/7666761