🧹 Reddit Comment Killer (a.k.a. "Invoke-RedditCommentDeath") 💬🪓

A PowerShell 7 script that finds your own Reddit comments older than a chosen age, optionally overwrites them first, and then deletes them — with rate-limit friendliness, resume support, and a paper trail (CSV report).

It’s basically spring cleaning for your comment history. It runs using a session-derived token from your logged-in Reddit session. 🧽✨

Auth note (important): Session-derived token reuse only. Why not OAuth? Reddit is axing OAuth API access for regular users, so this script sticks to the session tokens you already have.

✅ What this is

• 🧩 A single-file PowerShell script: Invoke-RedditCommentDeath.ps1
• 🔐 Auth: session-derived token reuse (default)
• 🔎 Scans your user comment listing (newest → oldest)
• ⏳ Processes comments older than -DaysOld
• ✍️🧼 Optionally overwrites comment text (default) before deleting
• 🧾 Produces:
  • a resume checkpoint JSON
  • an append-only processed-id log
  • a CSV report of actions taken

❌ What this is not

• 💣 Not a Reddit “nuke everything” button.
• 📝 Not a post/submission deleter.
• 🙅 Not for other users’ content.
• 🧠 Not guaranteed to outsmart every archive, cache, screenshot, or quote-tweet from 2017.

🛡️ Features (aka “the safety rails”)

• 🔑 Auth: session-derived token reuse (-SessionAccessToken), single-user only
• 🧑‍⚖️ Identity verification: verifies /api/v1/me before doing anything destructive.
• 🔁 Resume support: safe to stop/re-run; it won’t reprocess already handled comments.
• 🔄 Multi-pass until exhausted: reruns passes from newest → oldest until a pass finds no eligible comments (works around Reddit’s ~1k comment listing window); adjustable via -MaxPasses.
• 🐢 Rate-limit aware: randomized delays + batching cooldowns + defensive retry logic.
• 🧪 Dry runs: see what would happen without changing anything.
• 📊 CSV report output: so future-you can answer “what did I do?” without guessing.
• 🚫 Exclude subreddits: optionally skip specific subreddits using -ExcludedSubredditsFile (one subreddit name per line).

🧾 Requirements

• 🐉 PowerShell 7+ (the script declares #requires -Version 7.0)
• For auth: a session-derived access token from a logged-in Reddit session (passed securely via -SessionAccessToken).

🚀 Quick start (primary/default: session-derived)

1. Obtain a session-derived token from your logged-in Reddit session (treat as highly sensitive; do not log it).

2. Run a dry run first (seriously):

./Invoke-RedditCommentDeath.ps1 `
  -SessionAccessToken (Read-Host "Session token" -AsSecureString) `
  -DaysOld 90 `
  -DryRun

3. Run for real (default: overwrite + delete):

./Invoke-RedditCommentDeath.ps1 `
  -SessionAccessToken (Read-Host "Session token" -AsSecureString) `
  -DaysOld 90

🚫 Exclude specific subreddits

Create a text file (one subreddit per line):

# excluded-subreddits.txt
AskReddit
r/SomeSub
/r/AnotherSub/

Then run:

./Invoke-RedditCommentDeath.ps1 `
  -SessionAccessToken (Read-Host "Session token" -AsSecureString) `
  -DaysOld 90 `
  -ExcludedSubredditsFile "./excluded-subreddits.txt"

📚 Where the real docs live

For full setup, refresh-token instructions, overwrite modes, rate-limit knobs, resume files, and troubleshooting:

• 👉 See UserGuide.md

(Yes, it’s longer. Yes, that’s on purpose. The alternative is you guessing at Reddit’s auth quirks by “vibes,” and nobody wants that.)

🧾 Outputs

By default the script creates these files alongside where you run it:

• ./reddit_cleanup_state.json (resume checkpoint)
• ./reddit_cleanup_state.processed_ids.log (append-only processed fullnames)
• ./reddit_cleanup_report.csv (what happened)

If you enable two-pass overwrites (set -TwoPassProbability > 0), it will also create a stable salt file:

• ./reddit_cleanup_state.two_pass_salt.txt (used to keep two-pass selection consistent across runs)

Paths can be overridden via parameters.

🧭 Listing window caveat

• Reddit’s /user/{name}/comments listing exposes roughly the newest 1,000 comments. Multi-pass mode shrinks that window over time and stops when a pass finds zero eligible items (older-than-cutoff, not excluded, not already processed). Excluded or newer comments remain and can still occupy that window.
• Optional -RetryFailures keeps failed deletes off the processed list so they’re retried on later passes (default behavior marks failures processed).

⚠️ A small, friendly warning

This script can delete a lot of your comment history very quickly.

• 🧪 Use -DryRun first.
• 🧯 Consider using -SafetyHours if you’re worried about “cutoff boundary” mistakes.
• 🐢 Reddit rate limits and anti-abuse systems exist; the defaults are intentionally conservative.

📝 License

The Unlicense (public domain). ✅

See https://unlicense.org/

---

🕶️ Epilogue

"No rules are broken. No alarms are triggered. Things simply… disappear."