[ds]

All the existing databroker remover tools are flawed because they make use of manual labor to remove you from sites, primarily done by people in third world countries.

We @ https://redact.dev are working on a pure software mechanism for doing these optouts directly from your own device. We already have full mass deletions for over 40 social media and utilitys.

[vohk]

I really dislike the trend of making everything a subscription service. I can imagine a niche market that wants to continuously delete content older than an arbitrary window but isn't this the sort of service that most users would need only need sporadically?

The pricing seems to implicitly acknowledge this: $35/m billed monthly vs $8/m billed annually! Would you really expect anyone to intentionally renew monthly? I can't argue that people forgetting to unsubscribe pays the bills, but as a business model it leaves a bad taste.

[micromacrofoot]

Data brokers are like the hydra, one goes down and another 2 new ones pop up. It's a lot of work to keep on top of deletions if you want privacy.

[mgiampapa]

This explains some trends where posts are being edited on Reddit with nonsense then deleted. Personally, I think this kind of behavior makes the web poorer as a knowledge base. Yes you have a right to do it with your own content, but doing it at scale makes the internet a less useful tool and it makes me a bit sad since the scrapers will already have the data anyway.

[dotnet00]

Those are mostly in response to reddit's API changes. By editing the comments before deletion, the archives also get wiped and it takes a bit more effort for reddit to restore deleted comments behind users' backs.

Yes, it makes the web poorer as a knowledge base, but it's in response to companies like reddit ruining the internet by baiting in users, changing the agreement and then trying to keep the content that was written under the previous agreements.

[Brian_K_White]

Hopefully it just makes sites remove the ability to edit or delete things once they've been published. Especially forums where things have been referenced by other things.

As much as I routinely fine-tune and fix up a comment after initially writing, I will happily go back to the old days before such ability became common, in trade for the sanity of references that don't disappear or change meaning after the fact. The typos don't hurt as much as the swiss cheese and schitzo conversations.

[stainablesteel]

that's not actually a flaw

a real flaw is that companies in this niche are actually centralizing data to re-sell while adding a new line in the dataset that says "wanted to remove their data footprints"

[tjames7000]

easyoptouts.com, which I work on, doesn't use manual labor - everything is automated! It's definitely important to avoid giving more people access to the data.

edit: and as a result of automation, our prices are also way lower than most similar services

[miguelazo]

Many databrokers make it very difficult to remove your info, on purpose, of course. That is why the legit removal providers have to rely on manual labor for some. I'd love to see it fully automated, but I'll believe it when I see it. Last I checked, Optery was removing 325+. Best of luck-- you have a long way to go.

Edit: this looks like a totally different service. Mass deletion of old posts is one thing, removing PII from data brokers is another.

[shrimp_emoji]

In other words, would you describe your site as the Gillette razor attachment mechanism of online data deletion?