Guide on how to properly delete your reddit account.

README.md

How to properly delete your Reddit account

After countless protests from the community and greed (not to mention arrogance) from the CEO of Reddit, enough is enough! It's time to leave this website, and show them no mercy.

This guide is for those of you who are finally fed up with the company having no regard for their users, and who are now ready to leave.

Prerequisites

• A desktop browser
• A little tech-savvyness, or at least being comfortable using the developer tools in your browser
• Patience

Step 1. Acquire all your Reddit data

In order for proper deletion, you must first get ahold of all your user data on Reddit. With GDPR regulations, you can do so by following this link.

Unfortunately, it will take some time before the data is ready. For me, it took around 3 weeks. Be patient.

Step 2a. Deleting all your content

Simply deleting your account will not do. When you delete your account without first deleting your content, your content is not deleted. Quote from reddit:

• Your posts and comments become disassociated.

  Any posts or comments you made from your deleted account stay on Reddit, but people can’t see who they came from. (If you have posts or comments you’d like to remove, you need to delete them before you delete your account.) Please note that when you delete a post, the link to the post will still exist, but the post itself is deleted. The post is only accessible with a direct link and will not appear in Reddit search.

In other words, you need to manually delete all your content. This can however, not be done from your profile page in most cases as you do not actually get to see older content from your profile. This is why you need the data dump mentioned earlier.

Step 2b. Acquire the ids of your posts and comments.

Now that you have the data dump, you should have two files, one called posts.csv and comments.csv. Open these files in your favorite spreadsheet program of choice, and copy the first column in both to somewhere you can easily access.

Keep them labeled so you know which set of ids are posts and which are comments.

Make sure you keep the linebreaks per id. Your copied text should look something like:

id
ba4d7e
78e3mj
7d4ony
9bkmvz
5h1zvq
69g353
5arvaf
6h5p7y
5h5qlv
ax7qb8
7il3hx
6u30ty
59w2d5
6o0vsq
9xvqbf
5rorul
7xxdcl
tbk7n
ofi3wf

Step 2c. Start the content deletion process

Go to the overview (profile page) of your account on the old reddit layout, and open the developer tools in your browser (usually done by pressing F12). Select "Console" and copy paste all the code from fuck-spez.js from this gist into the console.

Now, to start the deletion process, you'll type this and press enter:

deleteAll(`your post ids here`, `your comment ids here`);

Replace "your post ids here" and "your comment ids here" with your actual ids. Keep the backtics.

Example

deleteAll(`id
ba4d7e
78e3mj
7d4ony
9bkmvz
5h1zvq
69g353
5arvaf
6h5p7y
5h5qlv
ax7qb8
7il3hx
6u30ty
59w2d5
6o0vsq
9xvqbf
5rorul
7xxdcl
tbk7n
ofi3wf`, `id
c2tupzg
c4pp159
c2ttjpv
c2wzms5
c9pw07v
c4l64nx
c4l9ue6
ci9btwh
c9pw3s8
c2tzeve
c4pp44s
c2tul9t
c2tsdo2
c4ppgz7
c3k6o1g
c2ts1mi
c4l4x8c
c9pijgq
c2tryr9
cryyblt
crzafyg
c2ts66h
c4pp91m
cijme9j
c4l6ba3
`);

Now just wait, and all your content should be first edited to gibberish (to avoid Reddit simply restoring your content by unflagging it as deleted), then deleted.

Depending on how big your account is, this might take several hours. Keep the tab open and go do something else, and check back periodically to see how much is left.

When it is done, your console should say "All done!" and your profile should look like this after a refresh:

Step 3. Delete your account

With a purged reddit profile, you are now ready to finally delete your account! We're almost done!

Follow this link, and follow the instructions to delete your reddit account.

(Optional) Step 4. Show your support

Feel free to post a comment in this gist with a screenshot of your purged reddit profile to show support to the moderators, developers of third party apps, and not to mention the disabled people who are affected by the API changes.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You are now finally free from the snoo. Where to go from here? Well, if you still want something close to the Reddit experience, the Fediverse is a good option. Check out Lemmy or kbin if you're curious.

fuck-spez.js

// Certain subreddits will not let you edit posts to pure gibberish. This string of text tries to "trick" those filters.
const ANTI_SPAM_FILTER_CONTENT = `In publishing and graphic design, Lorem ipsum is a placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the visual form of a document or a typeface without relying on meaningful content. Lorem ipsum may be used as a placeholder before final copy is available. Wikipedia`;

const getRandomString = () =>
  Math.floor(
    Math.random() *
      parseInt(
        "fuckspezfuckspezfuckspezfuckspezfuckspezfuckspezfuckspezfuckspezfuckspez",
        36,
      ),
  ).toString(36);
const zzz = (ms) => new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, ms));

const getFormattedId = (type, id) => {
  const prefix = {
    post: "t3",
    comment: "t1",
  }[type];

  return `${prefix}_${id}`;
};

async function editContent(options) {
  const { csrfToken, type, id, newContent } = options;

  const response = await fetch("https://old.reddit.com/api/editusertext", {
    method: "post",
    headers: {
      "content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8",
    },
    body: new URLSearchParams({
      thing_id: getFormattedId(type, id),
      text: newContent,
      uh: csrfToken,
    }).toString(),
  });

  try {
    let json = await response.json();

    if (!json.success) {
      if (type == "comment") {
        return console.warn(`Failed to edit comment!`);
      }

      console.warn(
        `Failed to edit post! It might not be a selftext post, in which case this warning can be ignored`,
      );
    }
  } catch {}
}

async function deleteContent(options) {
  const { csrfToken, type, id } = options;

  await fetch("https://old.reddit.com/api/del", {
    method: "post",
    headers: {
      "content-type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8",
    },
    body: new URLSearchParams({
      thing_id: getFormattedId(type, id),
      uh: csrfToken,
    }).toString(),
  });
}

async function purgeContentByIds(csrfToken, type, idsString) {
  const ids = idsString
    .trim()
    .split("\n")
    .filter((x) => x != "id");
    
  console.info(`Starting garbling and deletion of ${ids.length} ${type}s`);

  let deleted = 0;
  for (const id of ids) {
    console.log(`Deleting https://redd.it/${id}`);

    await editContent({
      csrfToken,
      id,
      type,
      newContent: ANTI_SPAM_FILTER_CONTENT + getRandomString(),
    });
    await zzz(1000);
    await deleteContent({ csrfToken, id, type });

    deleted += 1;
    console.info(
      `Deleted ${deleted}/${ids.length} ${type}s (${Math.floor(
        (deleted / ids.length) * 100,
      )}%)`,
    );

    await zzz(3000);
  }

  console.info(`Finished deleting ${ids.length} ${type}s!`);
}

async function deleteAll(posts, comments) {
  const csrfToken = document.querySelector("input[name=uh]").value;

  if (!csrfToken) {
    throw new Error("CSRF token missing! Are you on the old layout?");
  }

  await purgeContentByIds(csrfToken, "post", posts);
  await zzz(1000);
  await purgeContentByIds(csrfToken, "comment", comments);

  console.info("All done!");
}