SOFTWARE
Erase your digital footprint (or some of it, anyways)
You’ll want to use this if you become famous…
So I recently came across this cool app called Redact, and I just thought I’d share it because what it does is pretty sweet, especially nowadays where we want to be more careful about what we put up online.
Basically it’s an app that can go through your social media services and wipe out content that you’ve put up such as DMs, posts, videos, retweets, etc.
NOTE: If you’d prefer to watch this article instead, then take a look at my video on Redact!
At the time of writing, Redact supports 30 different services:
So you might be wondering — what’s the point of Redact? Don’t services like Instagram already let you do this?
Here are the three key problems that Redact tackles.
Deletion of old content
When it comes to deleting stuff that you’ve put up online ages ago, it can be a real hassle to scroll all the way back up.
Sure, for services like Discord where you’ve got more search functionality, it might not seem too bad…
… but in services like Instagram, where there’s absolutely no way to go back to messages or content from a certain date easily, it’s really annoying to have to spend a long time scrolling up and up and up.
Redact comes in and solves this issue, as they’ve got a date range selector, where you can tell it to look through a certain time period for messages, posts, whatever it is you’re trying to delete.
Scheduled deletion
If you’re the kind of person that likes to constantly keep their social media and online presence clean, then you’ll know what I’m talking about here.
Whilst it is possible to delete stuff manually on a regular basis if you really wanted, it’s just not very practical, especially depending on how often you want to delete your messages/posts/etc.
Daily or weekly deletions might not be too bad to do manually, but if you’re planning on deleting stuff on a monthly or yearly basis, it can be pretty burdensome given that you’ve got to delete several months or a year’s worth of content.
Redact has an in-built scheduler feature where, once you sign in to the service through Redact, you can get Redact to automatically wipe out content on a regular basis (as shown below).
Deleting content with specific terms
As I said earlier, some services like Discord have decent search functionality, others don’t, which makes it a real pain in the behind when you want to delete content with specific words or terms in them.
What do I mean by this? Well, let’s say hypothetically that I said the word “apple” and 10 years later, it became problematic.
Well, instead of having to scroll all the way back up and read every message, I can use the keyword selection tool in Redact to tell it to look for my messages with that specific word in it.
Pretty neat if you ask me.
Demonstration of Redact
So now I’ll show you what Redact’s actually like to use, and for this demonstration I’ll be deleting some DMs (Direct Messages) that I’ve sent on Instagram.
This is what the Redact interface looks like inside the deletion page for Instagram — pretty clean and simple UI.
When I scroll down, there’s a conversation selector, where I can choose one or more conversations to delete from (which already makes it far more convenient than doing it manually).
Once I’ve chosen the conversation that I want to delete from, I’ve got access to a whole range of customisation including —
The date range selector:
The keyword selector:
For today’s demonstration, I’ll be choosing the words “cancelled”, “problematic” and “private info”.
Further deletion options:
Before I press delete, I have 4 different options as to how I want the content to be deleted.
This allows me to see what’s being deleted as it’s being deleted.
This deletes any and all messages that suit my defined criteria without showing it to me first.
This scans through my content, serves up whatever fits the defined criteria, and I can choose which ones to keep and which ones to delete.
This is the option to enable scheduled deletion (the one I showed you earlier).
For today, I’ll be going with the select and delete mode.
Before you can get to deleting, you’ll be presented with this disclaimer — just your usual, letting you know that some user metrics and error data is being logged, and that you should be familiar with the terms of service.
Once you agree, you can get to deleting!
There’s all the messages that fit my criteria pulled up and ready to delete. I’ve chosen the first two to delete, and just like that, they’re gone!
Something to keep in mind is that although my messages were pulled up really quickly (as they were sent in the last day and there were only three of them), your mileage may vary, as the speed at which it pulls up or deletes your content may be a bit slower if you’re trying to delete a year’s worth of content vs one day.
Also, depending on which service you’re trying to delete from, the rate at which the content is deleted may be slower due to limitations imposed by the actual platform itself, not Redact.
For example, Discord’s rate limit leads to slower deletion of your content.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I really like Redact. They’ve got some really useful features, a wide range of supported platforms, as well as an active Discord community with a responsive dev team that’s quick to fix bugs and help users.
It’s also completely free for personal use (at the time of writing), which is a huge bonus.
However, some things to keep in mind before using Redact is that as per their terms of service, they are still in the alpha stage, so you have to bear responsibility for what you do with Redact.
Also, depending on the service you’re trying to delete from, and their terms of service, you do run the risk of being banned as a result of mass deleting content — there haven’t been any instances of this happening to date, but I think it’s important to keep in mind.
Finally, it’s kind of a given with a service named Redact, but there’s little to no opportunity for data recovery, so make sure that you stay safe and back important data up before attempting to use Redact.
Limitations aside, I quite like Redact. It’s definitely got a ton of use cases, and it’s great for getting some more control over your online presence.
Download and Install Redact here.
