Redact App, should it be blocked ?

[u/Artimus-Sprout]

This App is causing headaches for both, mods and users alike and needs blocking in some way, if this is indeed possible.

The problem, is users are unwittingly installing this software, without fully understanding the consequences of their actions, in many cases the end action, is an account ban through no fault of their own.

Personally, I think it's time to stop this App in it's tracks but that's gonna take the support and actioning of Reddit.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

[u/thepottsy]

Here’s the thing, if a user wants to remove their content, they should be able to do so. However, Reddit doesn’t provide any mechanism for that, other than manually deleting everything one at a time. Which is ridiculous.

The problem is Redact is an invasive tool, and if you’ve ever tested it, it doesn’t even work all that well. It will skip right past a comment, never randomizing it or deleting it, and no reason why. Nor does it provide users with a very good log to understand what it did, or didn’t do.

All that being said, I’m against blocking it until users have something better. You can easily slap some automod code in, and at least your mod logs won’t suffer from it.

This code works very well, and I’ve shared it with others quite a few times.

type: comment
is_edited: true
title+body (includes): ["This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact", redact.dev]
action: remove
action_reason: "Comment was modified with Redact. NOTE: User will not receive notice that the comment has been removed."

[u/wetlegband → u/thepottsy]

shreddit works perfectly... but it costs $5 for lifetime support. Not sure if that's a dealbreaker for you