Reddit’s API is effectively dead for archival. Third-party apps are gone. Reddit has threatened to cut off access to the Pushshift dataset multiple times. But 3.28TB of Reddit history exists as a torrent right now, and I built a tool to turn it into something you can browse on your own hardware.
The key point: This doesn’t touch Reddit’s servers. Ever. Download the Pushshift dataset, run my tool locally, get a fully browsable archive. Works on an air-gapped machine. Works on a Raspberry Pi serving your LAN. Works on a USB drive you hand to someone.
What it does: Takes compressed data dumps from Reddit (.zst), Voat (SQL), and Ruqqus (.7z) and generates static HTML. No JavaScript, no external requests, no tracking. Open index.html and browse. Want search? Run the optional Docker stack with PostgreSQL – still entirely on your machine.
API & AI Integration: Full REST API with 30+ endpoints – posts, comments, users, subreddits, full-text search, aggregations. Also ships with an MCP server (29 tools) so you can query your archive directly from AI tools.
Self-hosting options:
- USB drive / local folder (just open the HTML files)
- Home server on your LAN
- Tor hidden service (2 commands, no port forwarding needed)
- VPS with HTTPS
- GitHub Pages for small archives
Why this matters: Once you have the data, you own it. No API keys, no rate limits, no ToS changes can take it away.
Scale: Tens of millions of posts per instance. PostgreSQL backend keeps memory constant regardless of dataset size. For the full 2.38B post dataset, run multiple instances by topic.
How I built it: Python, PostgreSQL, Jinja2 templates, Docker. Used Claude Code throughout as an experiment in AI-assisted development. Learned that the workflow is “trust but verify” – it accelerates the boring parts but you still own the architecture.
Live demo: https://online-archives.github.io/redd-archiver-example/ GitHub: https://github.com/19-84/redd-archiver (Public Domain)
Pushshift torrent: https://academictorrents.com/details/1614740ac8c94505e4ecb9d88be8bed7b6afddd4
I mean I can’t see what the comment was and I’m assuming it must’ve been downright hateful, but that person almost certainly has learned a foreign language just to communicate with the world and in fact had to learn another foreign language in school because their name is Estonian for “gypsy” and learning two foreign languages (usually English and Russian, sometimes German or something else for the second foreign language) is required. Likely they speak 2.5 languages as is common here (my German is so bad I count it as half a language - native speakers speak too fast for me, but I can kinda get my point across if needed), but could be more.
Just pointing out that even when trying to be accepting of others, subtle anglo-defaultism can show up in your comment, not that I necessarily agree with whatever the comment was.