How To Delete Your Reddit Account (Updated 2021)

Reddit is one of the world’s largest online community-driven forums, with a total number of over 330 million users at the time of writing. The website hosts a huge range of subreddits (individual forums), covering all kind of subjects including /r/the_donald, which is used by supporters of Donald Trump, to /r/funny, which is where people share comics and memes.

Why are people deleting their Reddit accounts?

Despite its popularity, Reddit has experienced a mass exodus in recent years. There are a number of possible factors which may have caused this, however, a number of people have cited the website’s increasingly draconian censorship measures as a prime reason for them leaving the site.

Censorship on Reddit

According to our source, moderators are actively shadow banning users who express right-leaning political views or even some users who have expressed criticism of the CCP (The Chinese Communist Party). Moderators often cite “hate speech” as the broad reason for their censorship.

Political Discrimination

One of the most prevalent and highly visible problems experienced by Reddit users is the left-wing political bias. It remains a fact that many users who have expressed criticism of the Democrat party, or who have made comments in support of the Republican party have seen their accounts banned from the popular /r/politics subreddit. This has caused many to agree that the site is a left-wing echo chamber.

Information Security

Another quite worrying event was the removal of a warrant canary in 2016. A warrant canary is a text file on a web server which regularly has a sentence added along the lines of “At x time on x date, we have not received any government order to hand over our user’s private data. If the updates stop, it generally means that the website owners have received a court order forcing them to turn in their user’s private information. Well, in 2016 that is exactly what happened. The warrant canary was suddenly removed, indicating that a warrant was received.

Can you deactivate a Reddit account?

At the time of writing, there is no way to simply deactivate your Reddit account. If you want to close your reddit account, permanent deletion is the only option. When you delete a Reddit account, the effects are permanent; you will not be able to log in to the account again.

Can I back up my Reddit account data and posts?

Prior to deleting your account, you may want to back up your forum posts or other account data first. Unfortunately, there is no simple way to do this, however, some people have had success with requesting a dump of their data from the Reddit help team on reddithelp.com.

How do I delete my Reddit account?

If you are ready to pull the plug and permanently delete your Reddit account, follow the steps below.

Please be aware that deleting your account will not remove any of the comments you made with that account. Instead, the comment author will just be changed to ‘[deleted]’. If you would like to delete comments, you will have to do it before deactivating your account.

The instructions below are aimed at users with a desktop or laptop computer, but you should be able to follow the same process on a mobile phone or tablet. The process should remain the same, but some of the button positions may be different.

Step 1: Log in to Reddit

Before you can delete your account, you have to log in. If you have forgotten your password, then you can do a password reset first. In this case, a reset link will be sent to your registered email account.

 

Step 2: Select your username

Once you have logged in, go ahead and click on your username at the top right of the main navigation bar. A menu should drop down with a list of options.

 

Step 3: Choose ‘User Settings’

Click on the ‘User Settings’ option from the dropdown menu. A popup modal window should appear with a form on it.

 

Step 4: Deactivate Account

Scroll to the bottom of the popup window and click on the ‘Deactivate Account’ link. A popup confirmation window will appear .

 

Step 5: Confirm Deactivation

Before you can fully delete your account, you will have to log in again using your username and password. Then it’s just a case of clicking the red ‘Deactivate’ button. Clicking the button will permanently delete your Reddit.com account.