4 Ways to Read Deleted Reddit Comments

While browsing through Reddit, you must have seen deleted or removed comments that may have aroused your curiosity. But do you know you can recover most of these deleted comments with the help of third-party tools?

In today’s post, I’ll show you four tools that can help you see deleted Reddit comments one way or another. These tools are completely free to use and aren’t illegal as well.

Note: The comments on Reddit are deleted for a reason, and usually they contain offensive material. Before trying to read deleted comments on Reddit, brace yourself for any upsetting comment.

1. Ceddit

Ceddit is currently the best solution for quickly viewing deleted comments on Reddit. It is a third-party website that lets you browse Reddit posts in its own interface.

It automatically recovers most of the deleted comments in a thread and highlights them with red color. Though it may not be able to recover some types of deleted comments, such as the ones deleted by the Reddit auto moderator.

If you are just looking to read deleted comments, then you can browse through it like your browse Reddit and look for posts highlighted in red. These posts have deleted comments that have been recovered by Ceddit.

However, if you want to read deleted comments in a specific post, then there is an easier way than manually looking for it. Simply, open that post on Reddit and in the URL remove the "r" from reddit.com and replace it with "c" to make it ceddit.com.

Below is an example of the URL changing:

Before:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/64vs8k/xxxxx/xxxx/xxxx/xx/xxxx/xxxx/xx/xx/

After:

https://www.ceddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/64vs8k/xxxxx/xxxx/xxxx/xx/xxxx/xxxx/xx/xx/

This will load that page in Ceddit interface and you can browse and see the comments that are highlighted in red.

2. ReSavr

If you are interested in reading deleted comments for the sake of knowledge, then ReSavr can be a great resource. ReSavr automatically saves all the deleted comments that are above 1000 characters in length.

Based on the theory that longer comments have a higher chance of hiding valuable information, ReSavr can help you find some real gems that you may not see otherwise.

ReSavr extracts all posts with such comments and shows them in its easy to navigate interface. It shows the post title and a total number of words that the deleted comment in it contains.

Interestingly, hovering your mouse cursor over a title shows the preview of the comment to let you quickly skim through and only read the comments that are worth your time.

I checked multiple deleted comments on ReSavr and many of them were actually very informative and worth reading.

3. Un-Delete Reddit Comments

This is a Chrome extension that lets you cache Reddit posts to view them later. It lets you save all types of comments even if they get deleted later. Though it won’t let you recover already deleted comments, however, it can be a powerful tool if you manually cache every important discussion.

To use the extension, simply open the Reddit post that you want to cache and click on the extension button. The extension will show the URL with a big Cache button below.

Click on the button and the page will be cached. You can click on the extension button later again to recover the saved page.

The good thing about it is that it can preserve all types of comments. Unlike Ceddit that may not be able to recover some types of deleted comments.

4. Wayback Machine

Wayback Machine is a web archiving service that takes screenshots of websites and caches them to make it available for the world to see. It also takes screenshots of Reddit posts, so you can move back in time and see a comment before it got deleted.

However, I will not recommend you to take Wayback Machine as your primary solution for reading deleted comments on Reddit.

It’ll require a bit of hard work to reveal the exact comment you are looking for – this includes searching through dozens of screenshots of the same post.

How it works

Simply enter the exact URL of the post of which you would like to see deleted comments. Wayback Machine will show a calendar with a blue circle on dates indicating that screenshots of this post have been taken on those particular days.

Now you just need to look for the day when the comment was deleted and see all the screenshots to see the comment. It can be really hard (trust me), so I am going to show a simple process that I use to easily search for deleted comments.

To easily pinpoint to the deleted comment:

1. Go to Reddit and see how many days ago the comment was deleted (it will be written next to it).
2. Now use a calculator and a calendar to move back that many days from the current day when you are viewing the comment (For example, if it says 67 days old, then simply move 67 days back from the current day and see what is the date on that specific day).
3. When you have the exact day when that comment was deleted simply move to the exact date in the Wayback machine.
4. Now hover your mouse cursor over that date and you should see some screenshots with the exact time when they were taken. You now just need to look for the screenshot that was taken before the comment was deleted.

An easier way to pinpoint to the right screenshot is to open the last screenshot of the day and look for the deleted comment. Take note of the exact time of deletion written next to it in hours.

Afterward, move to the screenshot before that specific time and you should see the content of the deleted comment.

It took me almost 15 minutes with this trick to pinpoint to the same deleted comment example that I have given in the Ceddit screenshot. Interestingly, Wayback Machine revealed two more paragraphs of the same deleted comment that were edited later by the user.

Ceddit was unable to reveal the edited content as you can see in the screenshots. So I believe Wayback Machine is a better solution for reading deleted Reddit comments if you really want to dig deeper.

Important note:

Wayback Machine takes screenshots based on activity on a web link. The more popular the post was, the more screenshots will be taken (i.e. more chances of reaching the exact comment).

Even if the post was not so popular, it will still have some screenshots when people were commenting on it.

In most cases, there should always be a screenshot of the deleted comment if the comment was made when the post was created or at least when it was popular. You should not raise your hopes if the deleted comment was made months after the activity on the post.

Ending thoughts

Ceddit is definitely the quickest tool to read deleted comments. However, if it fails, Wayback Machine will surely be able to help. And of course, ReSavr and Un-Delete reddit Comments can also be handy in many situations if you use them the right way.

Do you know any other tools to read deleted Reddit comments? Do share with us in the comments section.