From security and privacy concerns to good old-fashioned cringe, there are all kinds of reasons you might want to delete your old social media posts. And there are plenty of tools for the job out there. The problem: most tend to focus on one or two social media networks. Redact, however, is a paid tool with support for deleting posts on 28 different services.
You can use it to scan for old posts and choose what to delete, or you can search for posts that mention specific topics. It can also be used to delete posts on a schedule—this is perfect if, for example, you wanted to delete all Bluesky posts a month after you post them. It’s a lot of power, basically, and it runs locally on your computer, meaning you’re in control.
The services supported are broad, including retro social networks you haven’t thought about in ages alongside common work tools. The complete list of supported networks is Bluesky, Bumble, Deviantart, Discord, Disqus, Facebook, Flickr, Github, Gyazo, email (anything that supports IMAP), Imgur, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Medium, MyAnimeList, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, Skype, Slack, Stack Exchange, Steam, Telegram, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, WordPress, and Yelp. That’s a broad cross-section of the social web, ranging from dating apps to business tools.
How to use Redact
To get started, you’ll need to download the application and create an account. After that you can start signing into the services you want to delete posts from, then choose which posts you want to delete. If you use Chrome, there’s support for grabbing all the sites you’re currently logged into from there.
Unless you pay for a subscription you will quickly notice all kinds of limitations—the free plan only supports Facebook, Twitter, Discord, and Reddit, and even for those networks there are limits on how far back you can scan for messages and how many message you can delete. The free version is really only useful for getting a feel for the service.
You will need a paid plan for most features—plans start at $7.99 per month, which works out to $95.88 per year (there is no annual discount). That adds up for ongoing use, granted, though if you’re just emptying out old posts from a bunch of accounts you might only need to pay for a single month. The Ultimate plan is necessary if you want to delete files from “work” accounts including Slack, Github, and Stack Exchange—that plan starts at $14.99 per month, which works out to $179.88 per year.
Credit: Justin Pot
The process works the same for most social media networks and service: You sign into your account and can then start scanning for and deleting posts. There are four main modes: Preview, which lets you scan for posts and browse them; Deletion, which deletes everything without asking any questions; Select & Delete, which lets you check off the posts you want to delete before proceeding; and Schedule Deletion, which lets you automatically delete posts on an ongoing basis. Note that, for scheduled deletion to work, you will need to leave the application installed and running on your device.
Credit: Justin Pot
It’s worth noting that every application supported has an Easy and an Advanced form. How this works depends on which social network you’re using. Reddit’s advanced form, for example, lets you filter posts by subreddit, the kind of post, keywords, the NSFW tag, and more. You can even opt to not delete posts that have a certain amount of karma. There are similar advanced rules for every network, meaning you can really take control of what you want to delete.
There are numerous options to explore here, all tailored to the specific social network you’re trying to clear out. The user interface explains what everything does and, when there are limitations, what those limitations are. If you’re looking for a way to wipe your posts from a bunch of different social networks, all with one tool, Redact is worth trying out.
