I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence, but I raised a case with the ICO in the UK, and today they got back to me asking for all my communication with Reddit. Also today - after a month of silence - Reddit also emailed me with this

If you’re in the UK and had been affected by posts being restored, I’d recommend contacting the ICO. It takes less than 5 minutes

  • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yes, comments are being restored, but what they’re saying is it’s not something they’re doing deliberately. The scripts people were running were basically failing and comments got restored automatically. That message literally encourages you to run them again or try different ones

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      That doesn’t even make sense. How could a script failing to delete a post have this outcome?

      • _danny@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Yeah… My comments which were restored were deleted for several days before they started reappearing. That doesn’t sound like a flaw on the scripts, but a flaw on how reddit handles bulk comment deletion.

      • SpeakinTelnet@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        It doesn’t. A Reddit script just sends a request to delete the comment. At that point if the comment is deleted and then restored due to a timeout it is 100% on them.

        It would be different if they would send back an error code without any changes being made, but the fact that the comment was first deleted is proof enough that their system received and at least started to process the call.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        Fwiw this is not necessarily a new problem. As a mod I’ve seen it before, if you go through hitting “remove” on a whole bunch of comments in a row often some of them will be visible again when you refresh the page. Something similar could be what’s happened here. Reddit’s backend has never been very good.

        • radau@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          I can understand seeing them after a refresh, but visiting my user profile not logged in from Tor and showing everything deleted then having it all come back 2-3 weeks later is a little shady. I just checked my account again after my 3rd powerdeletesuite run since the shutdowns and I had one single comment restored (despite shredding before delete but maybe that failed)

          • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            Yeah that’s quite a bit more sus. If it’s showing up as disappeared after a couple of minutes, it should stay removed.

        • Boz (he/him)@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          I wouldn’t be surprised. This is the kind of problem that would usually only affect a small number of users. They should probably have done something about it before it had a chance to come back and bite them…

      • Jay@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If you ran those scripts while subreddits were dark, the script can’t see those comments you made in those particular subs, (they’re hidden along with the sub) and can’t delete them. Then later when the sub comes back to public mode, your comments will appear as well. So comments you thought you wiped were simply hiding.

        Just to add, also check the other sections on your comments when deleting (eg: hot/controversial) because sometimes those ones get missed by the scripts as well.

        Not to say that’s the only thing going on… wouldn’t surprise me if they are bringing back some stuff considering their history of shenannigans.

      • fishos@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The issue is reddit doesn’t store all the data in one indexed and centralized location. It was pointed out that “hot” and “top” sorting aren’t just a sort, but literally TWO LISTS that are constantly being updated and adjusted. So if you remove a comment from one list or location, it still might exist in other places. Then when reddit software gets around to reconciling these differences, the copy that still exists gets pushed onto the other lists and returns.

        I’m not trying to justify the system; it sucks and reddit is directly responsible for that. But it does seem like they’re not intentionally restoring content, it’s just a side effect of their bungled system.

    • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Except that’s crap, because I have been manually deleting my Reddit comments weekly at minimum for years, and I’ve had several that repopulated a few weeks ago, after being deleted for multiple weeks.

      Some of them have respawned more than once even.

      So Reddit is entirely full of shit.

    • Radium@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’m a web developer, that is absolutely not how any of this works.

      Their claim that the scripts are failing causing comments to be restored is not possible. When you make a request to a website the site returns a success or fail status. The scripts are getting success statuses, the users are manually checking and seeing that their posts are deleted and then they reappear later. This means there is a mechanism between step 2 and 3 being run by Reddit affecting an already completed action.

      Don’t comment on stuff like this unless you have any idea what you’re talking about.

    • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Why do you assume that reddit saying that’s the explanation, means that that’s the explanation? Christian’s done a pretty good job of documenting multiple instances of Reddit lying about what’s going on, and spez has been observed editing other people’s comments, so I wouldn’t assume that they’re telling the truth in this instance either.

    • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That makes absolutely zero sense. The scripts issue individual delete requests for each comment. If a comment is deleted, it should stay deleted, even if the script ultimately fails.

    • I, Mekon@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      I deleted mine by hand, they still returned. I’ve taken to editing them and replacing the text with [deleted]. Seems to be working better for now.

    • Boz (he/him)@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Whether they’re doing it on purpose is not relevant to the legal aspect of the situation. They have a responsibility to honor deletion requests. If a user complains, the appropriate response is “sorry you had a problem, we’ll fix it,” not “sorry, we will only honor our legal responsibilities if you follow our preferred [but not stated until now] procedure for requesting deletion, try again.” Having database problems opens you up to legal liability whether you like it or not, and trying to convince users that you are not responsible for your own database is… inappropriate.

      Besides, there have been bugs with manual deletion, too. This is at least partly a problem with their own systems.

    • Surp@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Sounds like a reddit admin posting on Lemmy spreading misinformation mischief to me! Is meat back on our menu boys?