I did this as well. Sad to see the content I created disappear, but at least now I can start reposting to a whole new fediverse 😅

Gotta weigh in here and say overwriting comments like that can hurt the end user more than it hurts Reddit. A lot of traffic to Reddit is intentional, with posts and comments showing up in search results from ddg/google. I know I've found my own posts from troubleshooting the same issue years later. Sure, delete/overwrite comparatively useless comments and posts, but leave up other useful content and use an ad blocker instead. That will hurt them more than deleting content, but still allow others to find the info they need.

Make sure it actually overwrote all your comments. PowerDeleteSuite doesn't respect the edit rate limit. I used a fork which runs much slower but respects the limit.

Also, it's a good idea to wait several days between the editing and deleting your account. Many users on reddit were suggesting that reddit holds on to pre-edit text for a while. Obviously archives hold onto it forever, but if your goal is to deny your content to reddit, that's orthogonal.

I did the same but with shreddit.

I've heard editing comments is likely more effective, but it's hard to say. I'm guessing they take regular backups anyway, so maybe that's not really a thing anymore.

Regardless, I'm planning on replacing all of my comments with something like "screw you Reddit, use Lemmy instead" or something to that effect. I have a ton, so I'll need a script to do that, which will probably get blocked anyway.

I thought I'd be making a long-tail exit as well, but I've been looking at my feed of mostly niche subs with an especially critical eye this week and concluded that even there, the signal-to-noise ratio had hit the point the web did as a whole that initially drove me to Reddit.

I'll still use it to declutter Google results, but I expect that utility to decline as helpful, detailed posts become fewer and fewer. There's still some distance to Facebook-level network lockdown.