Video description as of 2023-06-23 10:15 PDT:
This video shows that Reddit refused to delete all comments and posts of its users when they close their account via a CCPA / GDPR request. Posts and comments may contain PII. Specifically, Reddit tells users that they must delete the content themselves, which isn’t realistic if a user creates a lot of posts. Even if a user does delete their content, Reddit restores the content within a few days.
Video transcript:
- 2023-06-13 @ 15:15 PDT: user states he deleted all posts and comments
- 2023-06-16 @ 10:15 PDT (3 days later): user states all posts and comments have been restored
- 2023-06-19: user decides to submit a legal request under CCPA to delete content
- 2023-06-19 @ 11:07 PDT: user receives reply from “Reddit Legal Support” (RLS) which states they will delete the account but not the content associated with the account. It is up to the owner of the account to remove the content [e-mail contents reproduced below]
Reddit Legal Support (Reddit Support)
Jun 19, 2023, 11:07 PDT
Hello,
We would be happy to help you delete your Reddit account if you have one. Before we proceed please note:
1. Account deletion is irreversible.
2. Posts and comments must be separately deleted before deleting your account. If not separately deleted, the content of the posts and comments will remain visible and disassociated from any account. If you want your posts and comments removed, follow the instructions on our help page.
Once the above mentioned information is removed to your satisfaction, please submit your deletion request by using your Reddit account and this form so we know it's really you making the request.
More information about account deletion is available in our Privacy Policy.
Kind regards,
Reddit Legal Support
- 2023-06-19 @ 12:02 PDT: user replies back to RLS stating it is unrealistic expectation for end user to manually delete and alleges violation of CCPA [reply reproduced below]
Hello,
If I understand your response properly, you are refusing to delete all data associated with my account. I believe this is illegal and in violation of the CPR. In this case the onus is on you, Reddit, to delete all of the content associated with my account.
It is besides the point but last week I already deleted all of the posts and comments associated with my account. However Reddit has since restored most of the content.
It is untenable to demand all users to manually delete content when Reddit itself does not provide a self-serve mechanism to mass-delete content. Some users have thousands of posts and millions of comments.
Just as a reminder, my CPA request to delete my account and all associated data was made on June 19th 2023 and
must be completed by August 3rd 2023.
- 2023-06-24 @ 10:45 PDT: user has not received a reply from RLS. He decided to painstakingly delete all posts and comments while screen recording the effort. Video continues with the user manually deleting posts for his account (https://www.reddit.com/user/nucleocide). Then fast forwards to the end of the segment where the last posts are deleted
- 2023-06-25 @ 10:25 PDT: user discovers posts and comments are restored, again
User concludes video and clarifies why this is a violation of CCPA:
At this point it appears impossible to manually delete posts and comments on Reddit and expect them to stay deleted.
By not deleting all posts and comments in an automated way there is no way to guarantee that no PII [Personally Identifiable Information] has been left behind.
For example ...
<user gives example of a comment from 6 months ago on his account which includes his real first name and last name. Screen capture shows the comment was edited recently>
Since there is no guarantee that every single post and comment is free from PII, Reddit must delete all comments and posts from an account upon receiving a GDPR / CPA request.
Reddit Discussion on “/r/videos”: https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/14je01k/reddit_may_be_violating_the_fucking_ccpa/
Decided to expand on the original video and include a transcription of the events in the video. Hope this helps our visually impaired folks.
Personally, I find this disgusting. Hope Reddit gets litigated up the ass.
Seriously, thank you for that extra mile. This is the kind selflessness that I remember on the old internet
Good work on the transcription, it must’ve taken a while to do.
Normally, transcription like this will take a long time. However, since it’s largely text based (e-mails, viewing reddit) and relatively short. It was pretty easy to transcribe to text. With the help of some macOS features like copying and pasting from video, it became a
non-trivial task.I think I spent more time on formatting rather than on transcription.
If anyone here lives in California and has had reddit violate their rights you can file a complaint here: https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company
Discord is worse. At least Reddit lets you delete everything you post. With Discord, if you are banned from a server, then there is no way to delete your posts in that server. That is insane to me in this day and age.
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Yes, reddit let’s you delete everything you post but then they secretly repost it all a few days later. I’d argue that’s worse because they make you think it’s deleted but it’s not.
This behavior is demonstrated in the video and many other reddit users have posted similar complaints recently. I have personally experienced the same issue.
I agree that if Reddit is doing that, then that is unacceptable. I have no reason to doubt it, but I have not experienced it myself.
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In the code, looks like Lemmy instance administrators are given the option to purge all data associated with the account.
pub struct BanPerson { ... /// Optionally remove all their data. Useful for new troll accounts. pub remove_data: Option<bool>, ... }Usage of the “remove_data” boolean optional:
... // Remove their data if that's desired let remove_data = data.remove_data.unwrap_or(false); if remove_data { remove_user_data( person.id, context.pool(), context.settings(), context.client(), ) .await?; ...From a user perspective, there is a route available for them to delete their account:
But not clear if this removes the account AND posts and comments.
disclaimer: I don’t use rust and not familiar with the common libraries and stdlib, so maybe somebody else can chime in
The function names are quite clear. It looks like it deletes everything
At least Reddit lets you delete everything you post
Only the last 1000 comments or so. Earlier comments get dropped from your user profile and become virtually inaccessible, only findable with a google search.
Also, comments from closed subreddits are inaccessible to you, but still there (i.e. when the subreddit reopens, they will become available again).
That’s insane. I’m no lawyer but I’ve used the CCPA to get my info removed from a lot of those data-broker sites. It’s always immediate, “Okay, we’ve removed your information.” California better hit Reddit hard for this, and Europe too.
Well shoot. I’m in California these days and recently deleted all my comments on Reddit. I’ll have to monitor and see if they come back…
Edit - update, it looks like they’ve restored some but not others. That might have something to do with the multiple overwrites I did.
Since some have been restored you can now file a complaint with California. https://oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company
Keep upvoting for algorithm. Keep updating to never die. Keep disseminating to those unheard. Keep EDUCATING. So people on Internet will eventually get ourselves the insight to ponder and make (mass and individual) actions on ourselves (cause only us the mass will steer a happening
and slap his stubborness).Should never let this go down and covered.
I bet that this video/problem will never solve/succeed if people do not become considerate and woke but just read and passby from this. Protests seem not working to my perspectives. But, mass (compliant and infallible) actions ensures changes.
Was this written by an AI?
This is for the first time in my real Internet life that someone interrogates my comment (maybe also my real existence) whether if it’s written by AI or not. 🤣😂🤯😭
Lololol but so sad and eerie that netizens have begun to fear of contexts and contents they see on Internet and offline+tangible media
probably maliciously generated by AI I hope not(I understand and also experience).I should embrace and be cleverly prepared to this hardly grasped phenomenon that I’ve been worrying of and never been liking, to my perspective, the coming of real cultural information age.
I’m autistic and this definitely reads as someone on the spectrum, not someone purposefully trolling. Autistics do get a lot of AI likeness though.
Apologies if you are not on the spectrum.
It reads like someone with a thesaurus trying to act smart but instead coming across as creepy and stilted.
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I had to DMCA some of my stuff off the site to get it to stay off.
This seems enough to me to sue them on grounds of violating the GDPR. Not sure where spez is going with this but paying GDPR fines will most definitely not do any good to reddit’s profitability lol
How does one go about holding a US based company accountable violating an EU law that they aren’t required to comply with?
They are required to comply with it if they want to offer services to European customers. If they don’t comply with the local regulation they will face fines and if they don’t pay them and become compliant, they might have their access blocked from within the EU.
The same is true for Brazil, which has similar legislation to the GDPR to protect Brazilian users from online services abusive practices regarding their data. Services can and have been blocked in Brazil for failing to comply with local regulations.
Has this ever actually happened?
In Europe fines have been dealt but no blocking yet as far as I am aware. Just the fine and threat of a block happening is usually enough to make companies comply because they don’t want to lose out on the market share.
Edit: Link to Europe statistics: https://www.privacyaffairs.com/gdpr-fines/
The same way they have with Facebook, Google etc. If they continue to do business in Europe with European users, they comply with European law or get fined significant amounts.
They are required to comply with the GDPR to operate in Europe.
By this magic where they OPERATE IN EUROPE.
It’s either comply with laws regarding EU users or get blocked from operating in EU countries, I’m not sure of the entire process though
Reddit has its European headquarters in Ireland… And its absolutely legally required to follow our laws.
That Irish sandwich corporate structure (that’s really a thing , I’m not making it up) to dodge taxes is coming home to bite them in the ass. How delicious…
I really hope the GDPR is put to full use here.
I’m curious though, what would happen if someone sent a GDPR deletion request to a Lemmy instance? The server admin would then delete the posts and account, but what if some other instances had defederated after the user made the posts, how would it be possible to make sure the posts are deleted from those instances as well? In theory that could be hundreds of servers. I guess the user would have to reach out to each instance?
Good question. Yes, it would be much harder because you’re basically shotgunning your posts all over the place when posting here. I would think it’s pretty much impossible to make sure that every single instance of it is gone.
EU GDPR - where to report if someone refuses to delete personal data.
List of institutions for each EU member.: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_enI made a GDPR request through reddithelp.com last night; maybe I shouldn’t have bothered! Assuming I don’t hear back, I’ll resend the request via email then report them to the Information Commissioner (UK gov dept) if I’ve had no proper response.
By the way, I’m not sure if the California law is the same, but with a GDPR “right to be forgotten” request, the organisation must delete your data from their backups (or at least make sure your data will not be restored from a backup). Asking you to delete your own comments clearly won’t meet that requirement.
Just use shreddit…
so the CEO known for sharing pornographic pictures of minors online does not respect people’s privacy after all? who would’ve thought
I’m OOTL, spez did what now?
Spez was a mod of /r/jailbait
Worth noting that at the time users did not need to agree to be a moderator, it could be thrust upon them. I’ve heard that he had comments both on the sub and comments defending it, but have not personally seen any proof of that.
It’s not strictly untrue, but it has implications that I don’t personally quite believe (though I’m willing to change that opinion if somebody has evidence).
Back in the day invitations to be a mod were auto-accepted so the mod of /r/jailbait added him to the modlist
The guy’s a crappy CEO I’m not sure why people have meme about stupid shit like the above to distract from that
Spez was a mod of the jailbait sub before the corporate buyout shut it down. Technically we don’t know if he shared any pictures, but we know he was a mod at one point.
It should also be said that back then you could nominate users to be a mod and appoint them without their input.
Worth noting Colorado and very recently Connecticut have similar laws, so the complaint could be leveraged from multiple states.
