this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Reddit

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Any pointers on how to report them?

As requested, I'm posting the full text of the email into this post body. I hope it's screen reader friendly:

u/USERNAME,

tl;dr – you’re invited to a special program that lets redditors purchase stock at the same price as institutional investors when we IPO. Details about eligibility and next steps follow. This (long, dense) email has all the info we can provide due to legal restrictions.

As you may have heard, Reddit has taken steps toward becoming a publicly traded company with the initial public filing of our registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 22, 2024. Yes, it’s happening.

And because you have helped make Reddit what it is today, you now have the opportunity to become Reddit owners at the same price as institutional investors.

We’re offering a Directed Share Program (“DSP”) that invites eligible users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to participate in our initial public offering (“IPO”). (Including you!) Program Requirements While being selected to pre-register is the first step, there are certain legal and regulatory requirements to participate in the DSP that are outside of Reddit’s control. Bear with us here…

To be eligible for the DSP, you must: • Be a current U.S. resident; o You will be asked to provide the DSP Administrator a valid social security or permanent resident number, along with other personal information. Reddit will not have access to this data. o Please note that U.S. residents using a VPN may face application limitations if the VPN locates them in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions. • Be at least 18 years old; • Provide your full legal name and an email address; • Not be a current or former Reddit employee (FTE). When the DSP launches (a few weeks after pre-registration ends), individuals who have been confirmed for the program will be contacted by our external DSP Administrator. You will then be asked to provide additional information securely to the DSP Administrator to confirm your eligibility. How to pre-register The number of people who can participate in the DSP is limited; we will offer this opportunity to as many redditors as we are able to accommodate. If capacity is reached before the deadline, you will be added to the waitlist. Based on demand, we may also limit the number of shares available.

If you are interested in being part of Reddit’s DSP, please go to https://reddit.com/dsp on desktop to complete the pre-registration form. If you are one of the confirmed participants, we will follow up with an email with more details in the coming weeks. You can also refer to the Frequently Asked Questions for more information. Due to regulatory restrictions (yeah… we know…) we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions.

Pre-registering does not guarantee that you will be invited or able to participate in the DSP; it also does not obligate you to purchase shares.

As with any investment opportunity, you should make an individual decision based on your own personal circumstances and risk tolerance. Therefore, we urge you to review the preliminary prospectus, when available, before deciding whether to invest in Reddit.

The deadline for pre-registering for the DSP is March 5, 2024. If capacity is reached before the deadline, you will be added to the waitlist. What happens next? While there won’t be a confirmation email immediately after you pre-register, everyone who pre-registers will receive an email in the coming weeks from “[email protected]”, telling them whether they can proceed with the next steps for the DSP.

This is an automated message (beep, boop, beep) and does not receive replies. Please refer to the FAQ for more information. Per our lawyercats, we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions. Prospectus and Important Disclosures The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. When available, a copy of the preliminary prospectus related to the offering may be obtained from: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, New York, New York 10014, or email: [email protected]; Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, New York 10282, telephone: 1-866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316, or email: [email protected]; J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Attention:c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, telephone: 1-866-803-9204, or email: [email protected]; and BofA Securities, Inc., NC1-022-02-25, 201 North Tryon Street, Charlotte, North Carolina 28255-0001, Attention: Prospectus Department, telephone: 1-800-294-1322, or email: [email protected].

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This notification shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the registration statement has become effective, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time prior to the notice of its acceptance given after the effective date. An indication of interest in response to this notification will involve no obligation or commitment of any kind.

You are receiving this email because a Reddit account, USERNAME, is registered to this email address. 548 Market St., #16093, San Francisco, CA 94104–5401

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[–] [email protected] 312 points 8 months ago

Sounds like you need to contact your nation’s data protection authority

[–] [email protected] 235 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I believe it also violates California Privacy Protection laws as well

https://cppa.ca.gov/

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[–] [email protected] 120 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Does the GDPR have teeth against this kind of violation? Could Reddit be hit hard with violation fees?

[–] [email protected] 163 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If the user resides in Europe then yeah. This means they didn't follow GDPR and still retain data on user(s).

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It’s in the GDPR jurisdiction but Reddit accounts are anonymous AFAIK. IMO the GDPR does not protect anonymous data.

/cc @[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

E-mail counts as user ~~identifying~~ (it's a bit more complicated) information per the GDPR, so clearly they have kept user identifying information so the GDPR applies.

EDIT: as pointed out by @[email protected] and from reading recommendation wp136 provided by him in a different post, the e-mail, unless it contains the full user name is user idenfityable information - because it can be crossed with other data (not necessarilly the IP address) to identify a person - rather than identifying information. Either way, it is considered "personal data" by the GDPR, as said very explicitly in that document which gives e-mail as an example of such. The same applies to IP address (mentioned below).

Even an IP address is user identifying information per the GDPR, which is why if for example a website wants to be compliant without obtaining explicit user authorization, it needs to do things like not maintain logs with IP addresses for longer than it would be necessary to track down problems with the website or intrusion attempts.

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 8 months ago (3 children)

They sent one to my deleted account that was literally called GDPR_Violation lol

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I haven't used my reddit account the API change, beyond maybe 3 or 4 comments. I got an invite. How the fuck was I one of their top 35k most active users? Seems like their site isnt nearly as active as they're claiming

[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago (7 children)

It's based in Karma. Since I had over 200k I was invited in the first group even though I hadn't logged in since the change.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I have 40k karma on an 12 year old account and was invited. Obviously not buying that sit tho

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 8 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 62 points 8 months ago (3 children)

They’re getting desperate to find bag holders.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

it's getting more obvious they are going to pull the rug, admittedly I haven't followed too much on the situation or on reddit at all since I stopped using reddit almost a decade ago. the site really went to shit didn't it. I just grab my popcorn when new updates pop up these days, all reddit is for me now is an end result from a google search about a problem.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Youre telling me, they sent me TWO invitations for two of my accounts. One of which I retired years ago because the username was kinda insensitive. Its been inactive for years, yet apparently it has enough karma for them to message me about it.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 8 months ago

They once sent me an email, about their new privacy conditions on my deleted account too. If you live in EU I'd recommend forwarding this message and the confirmation of your account being deletes to your local data authorities. It's pretty easy to file a compliant

[–] [email protected] 51 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I wouldn't expect companies to hard delete in this day and age. I fully expect that they all soft delete, sadly.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Which is a GDPR violation and should be treated as such when they get caught

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago

I just found out my account that I deleted, was in fact not deleted.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Wasnt it only for us residents? Gdpr is european

[–] [email protected] 142 points 8 months ago (5 children)

That's true, but if OP is European and received this Mail, it is a GDPR violation regardless of if the content is relevant or not. As far as I know, not a lawyer.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Just checked my old empty (now) account i didnt get such an email and im european. Maybe they do a send all in steps or something and see who bites. Anyway if ppl want to file a compllaint here is a link with countries and departments to file a gdpr complaint:

https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You also had to be over (what appears to be) an overall karma threshold to get the invite. It wasn't sent to all users (I have a dormant second account that did not receive this notice). I received this message about 2 days ago.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (3 children)

theres definitely a threshold. my account with like 100k comment karma was invited, another with like 100 didnt.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Reddit may not track that, which isn't a defense against GDPR violations.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

On purpose GDPR violation is 4% of global yearly revenue fine for the company, which in reddit's case would be 32M USD.

Still I assume OP has not actually done "forget me" request for reddit, just deleted the account. Delete is not same thing, as requesting to destroying all identifiable data of you.

GDPR doesn't care were company is located, if you handle European citizens data, you must comply.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

I got the email in the UK. I don't think Reddit was looking at what countries users were from when sending it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

I got this email in the UK guessing they are just Feering it at every account with a verified email against it

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Reddit: "what are you fuckin' gonna do about it,...?"

[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Give 'em that sweet 4% global revenue fine after their IPO goes through would be a blast.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Does the GDPR still apply to the UK after Brexit? I thought it was a EU law.

[–] [email protected] 82 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (15 children)

Upon leaving the EU any laws that were in use were 'enshrined' into UK law. In order for the UK to remove EU laws we'd need to actively remove them through an act of parliament. (At least that's my vague understanding..) https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eu-legislation-and-uk-law

I'm happy to keep the EU laws, it'll save time when we rejoin.🇪🇺🇬🇧

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

Yeah, EU directives need to be adopted into local country legislature (with some deadlines), whereas EU delegated acts (usually hierarchically under a directive) automatically apply to all EU members. Hehe, members.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (3 children)

The UK has its own version of GDPR. That's actually how the EU works, it sets guidelines and the countries create their own laws within those guidelines.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Did you delete the account or ask for data deletion?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (9 children)

Ding ding ding we have a winner. Unless you’ve done an official “right of erasure” request they’re perfectly entitled to keep your data, account deletion and all.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago

I got a message in my email that's linked to a banned account...

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Automatic emails have revealed so many LGPD violations with my accounts too (LGPD is the Brazilian version of GDPR).

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It cheeses my beans so goram much that they took a perfectly good web site and made it terrible so they could sell it to "the public", notionally the same people who were using the site!!!

I can only conclude that this is some kind of scam and actually most of the thing is going to end up owned by deliberately nebulous "institutional investors" and not the community members who constitute and deserve ownership of the community. Or even the people at Reddit Inc. who did the work of making the thing.

DAE socialism?

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago

They only deleted my account once I @'d them on LinkedIn about the violation.

FWIW, I personally didn't receive this email on any of the delete accounts.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago

I had a high karma account that they permabanned. I imagine they probably want to send me an invite, but I never gave them my email.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago

Let me check my "deleted" reddit account email real quick.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago
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