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Reddit is feeding all user comments and posts into Google’s virtual wood chipper, meaning the reconstituted goop of your conversations is going to be spat out by Google’s AI language models. The move, as reported by Reuters, is worth $60 million a year for the social network.
You might, after reading this, want to delete your Reddit account and everything on it. Reddit, after all, isn’t much fun anymore—and not just because they killed off “reddit is fun” last year when they killed off all the good Reddit clients. The truth is that the older Reddit gets the less vital it feels, in part because last year the company seemed outright hostile to the moderators and posters who power the site. The company’s upcoming IPO, if the history of other social networks is anything to go by, probably isn’t going to make matters any better.
But deleting your Reddit account isn’t enough. Follow the official documentation and every post and comment you make will stay on the site—it’s just disassociated from your account. You might want all of your posts gone, forever, to avoid them being regurgitated by any large language models masquerading as general purpose AI. You also might want your own, personal backup of your posts. Here’s how to get that backup, delete your posts, and finally delete your account for good.
Back up your posts
You probably don’t want to lose all of the comments and posts you’ve made over the years. Reddit allows you to request your Reddit data—go through the process and you’ll get ZIP file full of CSV files that include all of your comments, posts, upvotes, and more.
To get started, log into Reddit and head to the data request page. You’ll be asked what kind of a request it is—if you’re in the EU or California, you can use those respective laws and Reddit will have to send you the information. If not, Reddit offers an “Other” field, which still works. Specify which dates you want or ask for all of your data, then click Submit.
Credit: Justin Pot
You’ll get a note saying that your data is on its way and that you’ll get a Reddit DM when the data is ready. I only had to wait a couple hours for my information. The archive comes as a ZIP file full of CSV files, which you can open using something like Microsoft Excel. Blogger Daniel Rosehill has a great blog post that outlines what’s in the file, if you want details.
Delete all posts and comments
Now that you’ve backed up your comments and posts, it’s time to delete them. The bad news: Reddit doesn’t offer a way to bulk delete your comments and posts. They suggest simply heading to your profile page, clicking the three dots to the right of such posts, then clicking Delete for every single one.
Credit: Justin Pot
That’s fine if you only have a couple posts, but longtime Reddit users likely have a lot more. There are a variety of tools out there that can bulk delete old posts. The best one I found is Reddit Nuker, a Chrome extension that has two buttons: Delete Posts and Delete Comments. Click either while you’re logged into Reddit and the extension will do the work for you.
Credit: Justin Pot
Note that, due to API limitation, this extension can only delete 100 comments or posts at a time. The extension will take a one-minute break after it hits this limit, after which you can click the button again to continue. It’s a little annoying—especially if you have thousands of posts—but believe me: it’s way less annoying than deleting everything one by one.
If that’s not automated enough, there’s another Chrome extension, Bulk Delete Reddit Posts, that can delete 50 posts and 50 comments per day for free. More than that costs $9.99, one-time, but it doesn’t make you play the same waiting game as Reddit Nuker. Both tools are well reviewed, so it’s really up to you.
Delete your Reddit account
Now that you’ve backed up your comments and posts and removed them from Reddit, it’s time to delete your account. Head to account settings and scroll down to the bottom. You’ll find the Delete account button.
Credit: Justin Pot
You’ll be asked why you’re leaving Reddit—you can respond or not respond (I recommend using AI to generate a long essay, just for the irony, but I’m a huge jerk). You’ll need to enter your username and password, check a box to indicate you know your data can’t be recovered, and that’s it: you can click the Delete button and your account will be completely gone. You’re free.
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