this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Privacy Guides

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In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.

This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.


You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:

Learn more...


Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!

Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!


This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.


Moderation Rules:

  1. We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
  2. This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
  3. No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
  4. Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
  5. Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
  6. Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
  7. News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
  8. Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
  9. No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
  10. No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
  11. Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
  12. General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.

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[–] evirac@vlemmy.net 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think we should promote Odyssey instead of YouTube. YouTube can also fuck people over any time over like reddit and it is in a much better position to do so. So if a creator has an Odyssey channel as well, why not provide an Odyssey link instead?

https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/reddit-breaks-the-law-trying-to-quell:6?r=86bBjbwaQEYfPativhC7gFKoZaUNt1ah

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

This is what I do innately.

I use RSS to track my "subscriptions". When one of those creators finally move over to ANY other platform other than youtube, I replace their youtube feed with that other platform. So all my subscriptions are in one place, but I'm not specifically tied to youtube.

Edit: I also don't need to login to my youtube/google account at all.

[–] evirac@vlemmy.net 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Man I I just use my rss feed as news reader. (I use read you from f-droid). Rss is such a dope and simple thing and I've just learned about it

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you get youtibe channels over rss? That would be super helpful as youtibes recommendations constantly miss the mark for me.

So the link is templated like this...

www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<ChannelID>

Getting the channelID is the worst part of the process. Let's take Hacksmith Industries as an example though. You visit their page, https://www.youtube.com/@theHacksmith. Head over to the "About" tab. Then find the "Share" arrow. When you click that arrow you'll get "Share Channel" and "Copy Channel ID". Copy "Channel ID" will give you UCjgpFI5dU-D1-kh9H1muoxQ

So the feed for Hacksmith Industries would be

www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCjgpFI5dU-D1-kh9H1muoxQ

[–] Stache_@beehaw.org 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There’s a comment pinned in the comments saying the content was being restored due to subreddits being changed from private to public. Still really shitty they don’t allow you to bulk delete though

[–] MasterBuilder@lemmy.one 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You say that as if it makes it okay. By definition, it means those comments were not deleted in the first place. When I want my monetizable data deleted, I want it deleted. Not "hidden". I'm a programmer. Changing a mode on a group does not have to "undelete" content. In fact, in any context involving business, explicit work to ensure the data is gone forever is often legally audited.

If they won't delete my data, and that ends up permitted, then I demand that any time my data is viewed or used, I expect compensation - just like musicians, writers, and media companies demand.

[–] Bozicus@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago

You're right that "technical difficulties" are not a good defense when they break the law, and neither is "we didn't do it on purpose." I don't think it would be a case where they'd have to pay for the use of the content, though, it would be a case under privacy law. And that would be a lose-lose situation, since if they won the privacy case, they would open a different, potentially nastier area of liability. I'm not a lawyer, but from what I've read, this is dangerous territory. Their safest move here would be to quietly re-delete everything, and try to convince users that the rollbacks never happened. (Aka "gaslighting.")

[–] MajesticFlame@lemmy.one 20 points 1 year ago

Still borderline illegal that they don't allow you to delete comments from private subredits...

[–] restingboredface@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

I dont know if that's the only reason they are actually doing it though. I deleted a bunch of comments using shreddit after the protest was over and those comments were back again this morning. I spend 20 minutes going through just replacing a bunch with gibberish as a test to see if that gets restored and will try deleting again in a few days. But I will not try to use a bulk delete service again because I'm not confident those are effective.

[–] tvbusy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Reddit both refused to delete comments and not showing some comments so that people cannot deleye manually? That's super "legal".

[–] RyeBread@feddit.de 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do think genuinely there's quite a bit going on here. They genuinely could be deleting comments, but there's a LOT that goes into it. Different caching servers not updating, reverting to old caches, subreddits being re-enabled and hidden comments being shown again, and lots of things. I do tend to think that Reddit is a shitty company with no respect for their average user, but this is a situation that from a technical standpoint there's a lot in that pipeline that can go wrong and revert back to old data for safety.

[–] maf@szmer.info 8 points 1 year ago

Negligence generally stems from convenience or incompetence. I don't know which is worse.

[–] whitehatbofh@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is read in one of these threads about reddit reporting deleted comments that if you white your comments and then delete it, they'll restore the edited version when next they do that.

A good edit would be:

I'm leaving reddit for good, because of how the admins and owners are mistreating third party app developers, mods, and users. I've moved to the Fediverse, which is a much nicer place, made by users and for users. I advise any who read this to do the same.

Here are a few links to get started:

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they reappear then maybe a comment of "if you see this post it means my deleted comment has been restored" would be a good addition too?

[–] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago

"If you see this comment it means Reddit has maliciously restored my deleted comments."

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wish someone would write a script that could do this for all comments.

[–] MartianFox@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are actually scripts that do exactly that, edit each comment with a predefined text and then delete it.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

That's awesome!

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are quite a few scripts to do so.

https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite is one of the better ones, best run it quick though, it uses the API, and so might die at the end of the month

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't realize it blanked them out before deleting them

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Not every mass-reddit-history deleter does. The good ones do.

[–] speedyturtle@lemmy.fmhy.ml 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Having deleted my account (after editing and deleting every post) only for this to happen, it really sucks, because now I have no way to actually get all of my old posts removed. I wasn't even deleting because of the protests, I was just purging an old account before they changed the API and I couldn't use power delete suite anymore.

[–] NightOwl@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wish I could just delete my account and be done with it all, but having to hold onto it due to lack of confidence that things will stay deleted and require monitoring on my account from time to time.

[–] demonicbullet@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah was gonna delete on the 30th but ive already seen my comments coming back to life. So I guess we'll hold onto it and check in occasionally

[–] HunterBidensLapDog@infosec.pub 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For those manually deleting posts one by one, consider replacing your post with random copy and paste text from copyrighted banned books instead.

[–] Cybermass@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Or to a link to "what is Lemmy?"

[–] tallwookie@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately it’ll likely be big payouts to lawyers, and fines. Users see pennies if anything.

Still, make them pay

[–] dill@lemmy.one 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How does that law actually work though? I thought it was only relevant to California residents.

[–] MajesticFlame@lemmy.one 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't know if CCPA specifically limits itself to residents. Generally laws like this apply to any business conducted in California, unless they limit it in the law itself. This means either the user or the company is in California. Reddit is in California.

Of course there is also the GDPR in EU so I am going to try it now.

[–] dotslashme@infosec.pub 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Me too, my deleted data has been restored twice now.

[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As long as at least one user from California was affected the Attorney General can take legal action against reddit.

[–] damnYouSun@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago

They are also held to account under GDPR.

Any site that does not explicitly block European users has to comply with it in case they have some European users.

[–] madmonki@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

all centric social media platforms eventually will fail at some point. long live fediverse

[–] LeHappStick@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Lmao I was just reading a post on Reddit of people saying that Lemmy was bad regarding privacy because "comments aren't actually deleted".

Oh boy, the society...

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