TL;DR: I got a response from Reddit that basically says they’re not violating anything.
There was a post here 3 weeks ago that talked about the GDPR violations Reddit is committing.
reddit is telling it’s future investors with recent news and more info on their IPO, that they’re currently selling and looking to sell their user’s data to companies wanting to train their LLMs, including Google.
I’m not sure of anyone else has gotten a response from them yet so I thought I’d share the email.
The Email:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Reddit.
As stated in Reddit’s Privacy policy much of the information on the Services is public and accessible to everyone, even without an account. By using the Services, you are directing us to share this information publicly and freely.
Reddit prohibits use of its service to infringe people’s intellectual property rights or any other proprietary rights, and prohibits unauthorized scraping of Reddit content. Please note, however, that when you submit content (including a post, comment, or chat message) to a public part of the Services, any visitors to and users of our Services will be able to see that content, the username associated with the content, and the date and time you originally submitted the content.
Reddit allows moderators to access Reddit content using moderator bots and tools. Reddit also allows other third parties to access public Reddit content using Reddit’s developer services, including Reddit Embeds, our APIs, Developer Platform, and similar technologies. We limit third-party access to this content. Reddit’s Developer Terms are our standard terms governing how these services are used by third parties.
Please note that you can use the Services without choosing to share information publicly and freely on them, and you can also remove your content from Reddit at your discretion. For more information, please check out our help center articles for more information here
Thank you, Reddit Legal Support
If you dislike this, keep in mind Lemmy provides a wide-open API for free scraping from pretty much any server (including yours). And if that wasn’t enough, people can also set up their own servers to pull upvote and downvote counts, all without vetting.
Yup. Lemmy beats Reddit in a lot of areas, but privacy isn’t one of them. In fact, federated services value transparency instead. Lemmy also kind of goes against the idea of anonymity somewhat, since many instances require email validation (you can use a temporary email though).
If you want privacy, don’t use social media.
People really find it hard to grasp that stuff you willingly post online in a public way can be seen by everyone. There was a thread here earlier about people flabbergasted that the admins of email services can read their unencrypted emails you send through their servers. Top response was said admins going “yes we can read your emails, no we don’t, we have better things to be doing with our time.”
Lemmy (not for profit social media) protects your privacy less than Reddit (corporate social media)
I’d rather not throw up my hands in defeat though thanks
Lemmy isn’t trying to protect your privacy, it instead goes completely the other way and makes everything as transparent as possible. For example:
Those things are “private” on Reddit, but they’re private for a different reason, and that reason isn’t to protect your privacy.
Social media by its very nature is not privacy friendly, so anything you post should be assumed to be publicly accessible. Lemmy just makes that explicit.
Except mod actions are capable of hiding a post and all its comments, basically giving Lemmy users the worst of both worlds. I found that out the hard way while replying to a comment in a removed thread.
Lemmy isn’t offering a cohesive, open experience. It’s very sloppy.
So while fixing the sloppiness they can also try making it less anti-privacy too.