Reddit has been fined more than £14 million (€16 million) by the UK’s information watchdog, accusing the social media giant of failing to protect children and leaving them vulnerable to “inappropriate and harmful content”.
Following an investigation, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found that the American company neglected to implement robust age-verification tools. Reddit told Euronews Next that it intends to appeal the decision.
Instead, Reddit relied heavily on “self-declaration”—allowing users to simply state their age without further proof—a method the watchdog deems insufficient for protecting children.
Seen different sources, some say its about age verifying to protect children from content, others about age verification because they are harvesting data they shouldn’t be harvesting on children. What about they shouldn’t be fucking data harvesting on anyone?!
Either way, fuck reddit. But I really hope this is just because they are harvesting data that they shouldn’t because then at least Lemmy should be safe from this kind of thing by just not harvesting user data. Reddit already requires ID to view NSFW in the UK, so if its “harmful content” I would be kinda curious what that is too.