I came across today one of my own comments on Reddit with a search on duckduckgo. It was still intact. The problem is I used shreddit to randomise and delete the entire contents of my account. My account comments and posts all show empty on my account pages on reddit so there should be nothing.
I did a site:reddit.com search using my username and found ~50 comments that Reddit has undeleted but also hide from my own account. I could still edit and delete them. Its curious that they don’t appear on my accounts content on Reddit and yet a search engine can find them and they are still served by Reddit. Ex Reddit users who deleted their account contents should be aware this is happening and report it as a GDPR breach to their respective agencies if they are in the EU if they too find this has occurred.
They are finding comments through Google and are then able to view, edit, and delete them on Reddit. They are not able to view them on their profile page.
They said the originals do not appear on their account on Reddit. They also said they edited their original posts to be empty. They’re able to edit and delete their modified (empty) comments based on what I understand of their post.
I don’t see anything in OP’s post that indicates Reddit.com itself is displaying the originals, only the search engines are, and the cache would be the reason why.
I just did a search just like OP said and while it’s true that most results are just outdated scraped content where my posts and comments have been deleted, I did find one just now that doesn’t appear on my account overview, but that I could see, edit, and delete on the reddit thread itself.
The second and third sentences of the second paragraph are talking about Reddit itself. OP does not see the comments in their own Reddit page, mass edited and deleted them at some point, but is still about to find them through a search engine actively on Reddit.
Maybe try reading it again
This is fine due diligence. You just need to frame it as such instead of confidently saying these things happened.
Skepticism is fine. Just assuming Reddit didn’t do something this egregious (when they probably did) is poor form.
This is not the first account I’ve heard of comments rising from the grave.
🤔