[HN Gopher] Show HN: Redact - Automated deletion for your conten... ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: Redact - Automated deletion for your content on social networks Author : ds Score : 98 points Date : 2021-05-27 14:10 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (redact.dev) (TXT) w3m dump (redact.dev) | aarchi wrote: | Is Redact affiliated with the EFF? The prominent "Support the | EFF" banner suggests so, but the FAQ makes no mention. | ds wrote: | No, we just believe in the mission of privacy and they seem | like the biggest supporters in the business. They paved the | road we now walk upon, so its due to give them something back. | | *edit- Seeing comments below, I can see the issues. We will | remove the 'Support the EFF' banner for now until we can do it | in a better manner. | trutannus wrote: | You may want to make that clear. I took that to mean this was | EFF sanctioned, and that changed how I was going to vet this | before I used it. That said, I love this project. | dr_kiszonka wrote: | I support this suggestion very strongly. Currently, it | really does seem like the service is affiliated with the | EFF, which is misleading. | | Keeping the current design has at least two drawbacks. | | - First, it makes you seem shady. After realizing that you | are probably not affiliated with the EFF, I became very | suspicious of the service, especially since it is closed- | source. | | - Second, there might be legal ramifications of | "pretending" to be affiliated with the EFF. | | If the banner wasn't there, I would have most likely | already downloaded and started using Redact for my personal | research project. It looks like a great product! | yosito wrote: | Last time I ran a script on one of my social media profiles, | Instagram locked my account, even though I ran the script in | read-only mode. How does this prevent being locked out? | jpdb wrote: | I'm one of the people who helped build one tiny part of this, and | I think the coolest part of Redact is the fact that it makes it | possible to clean up your social media history without totally | nuking it from orbit. Early on, we thought that most people would | use the service once to delete everything, and never touch it | again or only use it once every few months or even years. We | quickly found that a lot of people want to continue to use social | media services and like retaining the contents of their social | media and history of their lives, but want to clean up some | things that don't reflect their current views or could cause | issues today. | guavaNinja wrote: | Beware, 3 years ago I lost my facebook account after I deleted | all my posts using a python script that opened my facebook wall | and iterated over the posts. Couple of days later, I was banned | on facebook and whatsapp and never restored my old fb account, | but somehow got back my whatsapp's. Probably they watch for | possible bot interactions and flag them. | tobr wrote: | I would like to have this for Hacker News! Then again as far as I | know there's no way to delete old posts other than to email a | mod, so I suppose I could just schedule a regular automatic | email. | lucasnortj wrote: | Delete all of your social media accounts full stop | aboringusername wrote: | If there are any Redact devs here: | | Please add a feature to 'edit' messages with random data rather | than redact. This has the advantage of not only updating the | 'live' database but also if it's backed up in the future they'll | only have the garbage data and not what you actually said. | | Being able to overwrite history (where possible) is extremely | valuable that reddit/discord let you do. | | Additionally, there should be a 'spoofer' mode, that randomly | makes comments, uploads multi GB files full of random data and | adds noise to further enhance privacy. | | I take great joy in "abusing" text areas and file upload boxes on | the internet - it makes it significantly harder to track a | subject in any way when you are making 1000 comments a day, | uploading 10,000 photos you found randomly online and are joining | 50 different channels ;) | | To be honest I should probably make a script to do that, | especially on HN... | city41 wrote: | Just a heads up, Reddit now rate limits edits. Many redact | tools out there have not adapted yet unfortunately. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/mg077m/not_even_... | vineyardmike wrote: | > To be honest I should probably make a script to do that, | especially on HN... | | Please do not do this to HN. It'd make the service way less | usable for everyone else. | dr_kiszonka wrote: | > Please add a feature to 'edit' messages with random data | rather than redact. This has the advantage of not only updating | the 'live' database but also if it's backed up in the future | they'll only have the garbage data and not what you actually | said. | | This is a good point. Reddit is frequently uploaded to BigQuery | [0] | | 0. https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?project=fh- | bigquer... | slg wrote: | Maybe I am alone on this, but it seems pretty unethical and | selfish to "abuse" these systems and intentionally upload large | amounts of garbage data in order to improve your own personal | privacy. It is the equivalent of polluting. Feel free to | overwrite and delete your comments to protect privacy, but | users uploading "multi GB files full of random data" is putting | a real burden on other people and is going to lead to a worse | service for everyone. | kodah wrote: | Unethical, maybe. Though, how ethical should one be in war | when the enemy is a tyrant? | | The signals to rebellion start slow: you pester and annoy the | enemy to let them know they have tread on the wrong turf. You | try to inform them, then you try to concede points for shared | ground. Once the enemy has decided that your advancements and | ground meeting are to their advantage, and continue to gain | ground is what we identify as skirmishes and battle starts. | You ambush, you destroy logistical routes, you make it | difficult for the enemy perceive that this ground is | worthwhile. | | At what point do you fire the cannons? At what point does the | normally docile rest of society join you to arm your | rebellious battlements? | | I think you are witnessing the populous arming their cannons. | You can object, but you can't object that the enemy is closer | than ever. | slg wrote: | This just seems hyperbolic. They aren't a tyrant because | you can just leave their platform. You want to use their | platform without any of the consequences that come with | that usage. | | You are walking into someone else's house, making demands, | and breaking stuff when you don't get your way. | kodah wrote: | Every rebellion looks hyperbolic from the outside, I | would say. | | Reddit is indexed by an outside party, not Reddit itself. | Twitter is the same way. The most infamous of Facebook's | data exfiltration was Cambridge Analytica, which again is | an outside indexer. The accurate comparison, imo, is "we | all came to this land to communicate together, but you | use the platforms features to stalk people." | | Advertising is more of a concession of privacy, which I | can tolerate if it's iterated on. | | The option you lay in front of people is "leave". So, | someone of my convictions must leave once a platform | becomes so popular that it attracts professional | stalkers? Why is that the only acceptable option to you? | slg wrote: | Honestly this explanation makes it sound worse to me. | Your objection doesn't appear to be with these social | media companies. It seems to be with the very nature of | public communication. You want the benefit of publicly | communication without facing any repercussions for what | you said in public. And in order to help ensure you don't | face repercussions, you are polluting the shared public | spaces for everyone else and forcing these social media | companies to clean up after you. | | Every public platform can be externally monitored and | archived. If you don't accept that, don't participate in | public platforms. | kodah wrote: | Not really. I've participated in public communication | since I was a kid. IRC, public forums, etc... | | Advertisers and platform monetization are definitely part | of the problem, don't get me wrong. I just signalled that | I'm willing to iterate on that problem. When my mother | gets a call on her cellphone by a recruiter _looking for | me_ when we share zero relationships online it signals a | pretty desperate issue in how data is being used, | correlated, and exploited. The public side of these APIs | is just an exacerbation of those issues, because they 're | the same APIs an advertiser uses. | | You painting me as someone who is trying to avoid | repercussions is interesting. Do you normally assume the | worst about people when you debate them? | slg wrote: | >You painting me as someone who is trying to avoid | repercussions is interesting. Do you normally assume the | worst about people when you debate them? | | I think you are assuming a specific connotation on | "repercussions". I'm not talking about "repercussions" in | the coded "cancel culture" way. I am saying that you want | the positives of speaking in public without the unwanted | negatives. That is the literal definition of avoiding | repercussions. | | If your public speaking establishes you as some type of | expert, people are naturally going to start reaching out | to talk to you. That is the nature of public discourse. | What that recruiter did is wildly unethical, but it is a | natural repercussion of publicly showing traits of the | person the recruiter is looking to hire. There are | downsides to being a public citizen. You don't get a free | pass to act unethically in order to avoid those | downsides. | kodah wrote: | > I think you are assuming a specific connotation on | "repercussions" | | Use more careful wording then. In my eyes, you're here to | deny that a problem exists (for average people, not | experts) and you're advocating for me to not participate | in communities which I was historically able to | participate in without having my data exfiltrated or | stored in perpetuity. I've argued in the past that limits | to public data could perceivably exist, I think this is | reasonable, but to a denialist nothing is reasonable. | | The framing you propose is quite rosey, but then you | immediately walk it back with how bad it is, but that | it's a "natural" repercussion. So, while I want to do | something about it before it becomes a bigger problem | that can't be contained you're happy to sit back and say | there's nothing to see here. | | But hey, feel free to keep commenting on my ethics | without questioning your own. | slg wrote: | I don't know what to tell you. I feel pretty comfortable | with my ethical stance here of "Don't abuse a public | resource or intentionally create more work for other | people purely for your own personal convenience." | kodah wrote: | I think I've made it pretty clear "personal convenience" | is not the issue at stake here. I guess you're just | arguing in bad faith at this point. | slg wrote: | As you said previously... | | >Do you normally assume the worst about people when you | debate them? | | I don't know what I said here that seemed to offended | you. If you point out something that truly crossed a | line, I can apologize. You weren't the one who my | original comment was directed towards and in your very | first comment you admitted yourself that this type of | behavior was potentially unethical. I don't think I have | said anything worse than that and I don't know what I did | that you consider bad faith. The one example you gave of | a negative result was a recruiter calling your mother. | Stopping that falls under the category of "personal | convenience". We all get unwanted calls from time to | time. It is annoying, but it takes a couple minutes out | of your day and you move on. No reason to take that as | justification for flooding public sites with "multi GB | files full of random data" which is where the | conversation started. | kodah wrote: | Yeah, that's not "personal convenience". I would say this | borders on safety. I don't think it's that difficult to | imagine how this same dataset in the hands of a bad actor | is to be abused. | | In your case, my assumptions of you are based on how you | continually downplay concerns to "not happening" or | "that's no big deal". You also readily accused me of | avoiding repercussions, then walking back and walking | forward those claims in some kafka-esque dance. | | "Arguing in bad faith" also doesn't mean you've offended | me. It's just a realization that you have some other | motivation at stake here. People don't just recategorize | a safety and privacy issue as "personal convenience" | while dancing around calling it a problem. | throwkeep wrote: | Are they actually overwriting history though? Or are they just | adding another record, and hiding the previous version(s)? | slow_donkey wrote: | Hm any competent ops team would have backups if they really | cared to find your original data | sitzkrieg wrote: | beware deleting your own messages on discord ("self botting") is | against tos and people have been banned for it, myself included | vallas wrote: | Can we blame Discord for this? Edit: Does Discord deletes all | user messages when it bans an account? | Nadya wrote: | I've been using a very messy compilation of too-frequently- | abandoned tools from Github for things like this and slowly | applying local patches to them if/when they break and if I can | even determine what the problem is. Primarily to scrub my Reddit | and Twitter histories every so often. | | So this is absolutely something I'll be using. | | One thing I noticed immediately is that "DeviantArt" is not | listed as "Coming Soon" on the web page but is not currently | available in the desktop Electron app. | | E: | | One feature I would like to see is a Whitelist for Subreddits. I | currently remove all of my posts except posts in a subreddit | where 99% of my posts are Help/Q&A posts that I want to be able | to benefit future people. However I want to delete all my other | posts, which means knowing which subreddits I've posted in which | is not always easy since I sometimes land on things from /r/All. | (eg: "Delete all posts except on /r/Granblue_En") For now I had | to manually add a list of 56~ subreddits one by one that I got | from my log. | | E2: One of the team members (Dan) responded to me over Discord. | My requested feature was already on the ToDo list since they have | a similar use case. | thinkloop wrote: | How come HN doesn't have to follow delete laws allowing users to | delete their messages? | nenaan wrote: | GDPR doesnt apply in America. | ds wrote: | Hey HN- Im one of the team members at redact. Redact is a cross | platform electron app which allows you to delete content | programmatically from most of the big sites out there (we are | adding more every day). Meaning, you could say something like | "Delete all posts I made on instagram with less than 15 likes in | 2019" or (very soon) "Delete all my tweets that are political" We | have been working on this for a little over a year. As you can | imagine, working with some of these legacy services is less than | ideal. (looking at you skype) | | When we launched, we were aware of tons of other free services | that let you delete content, but we found that most of them were | either unmaintained and broken, not feature rich enough or | complicated for grandmas to install. "Ok, so first- download Kali | linux to a thumb drive. Then reboot into it and install python | and clone this repo...." | | Our goal with redact is to make privacy as accessible to the | general public as possible. There are tons of services that let | you delete 'public' data about you (for instance, deleting your | whitepages.com page) but we found very few which took care of | content YOU created across more than 1 service. | itake wrote: | Any ideas why your app is so big? | | macOS Redact is 433MB. Firefox is 370MB. Is this an artifact of | electron? | [deleted] | jarek-foksa wrote: | This is the new normal for Electron-based apps on macOS. The | Electron framework itself is ~350 MB when targeting both | Intel- and M1-based Macs. | ds wrote: | Yeah, electron :) | FractalHQ wrote: | Check out Tauri it is much an smaller and faster than | electron. | beedrillzzzzz wrote: | Do services like Facebook Messenger or Twitter allow you to | totally delete/redact messages, or is it just hiding the data | from the user's view on one side? | slg wrote: | >Meaning, you could say something like... "Delete all my tweets | that are political" | | Are you open to sharing how this will be done? Are you doing | analysis of the body of the posts, where they were posted, who | or what they are replying to, etc? I imagine this is more | difficult on some social media sites. Twitter for example is | highly time sensitive. A tweet in reaction to some political | news event might not have any political language in it and only | reveals itself to be political when viewed in the proper | context. | 3ygun wrote: | Dan congrats! | | Q: Was a reason you choose a User installed application | (Electron or Mobile App) vs SaaS to avoid having to store | username/password for sites and the ToS issues that result from | that? Or am I off base with previous comments in another | Discord? | | Meme Q: Were earlier versions of redact.dev so powerful they | redacted the trip to Japan? :( | | Best wishes and #YeeAlwaysWins | [deleted] | norcon4 wrote: | Found this interesting from the FAQ: | | > "Why don't you support anything made by Google or Apple?" | | > At this time, we are reliant on both Google and Apple to be | listed in their respective app stores. As such, we have been | advised that in order to remain in good standing we should not | offer support for these services. | | What a disturbing reality these developers are up against. Even | though this is a big limitation, the project is wonderful! | fnord77 wrote: | facebook / twitter will complain to apple and they'll get | booted. | that_guy_iain wrote: | I expected this to be a project with a few developers on it. But | it looks like a serious company. | | What I don't understand is why an electron app? Why not a SaaS | app? | | I see the plan to make money via premium features on the phone | apps but I am even more confused to why I would want to run this | on my phone. | amalantony06 wrote: | Electron app obv implies more privacy in a sense (assuming that | no data is sent to their server). | | You wouldn't but "average users" would prefer to run it on | their phone. For example, this could turn into a social media | management tool for "influencers" and celebrities - managing | their social media profiles with advanced deletion conditions | etc. | david-cako wrote: | This is an awesome tool that addresses a real need for many | privacy conscious folks! | uoflcards22 wrote: | This is truly awesome. Been using hacky scripts for this purpose | for a while - seeing a more formal solution is very exciting. | Kudos. Also, would definitely pay for this, FWIW | fotta wrote: | How does this get around Twitter's limits on retrieving older | tweets? Last time I built a script to bulk delete tweets I had to | manually export my data to get all the tweet ids for older | tweets. | endiangroup wrote: | AD: I can't see any source code? Did you redact it already? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-28 23:01 UTC)