I have just been tossed off Reddit. No bad behaviour but Reddit suspects I am not old enough. I have been an adult for quite a few years. Note that age verification is not (yet) required under EU law.

The age verification on Reddit runs through a third party which is associated with Palantir. I will not do this, and there’s enough data associated with my account to show I’m an adult.
In general I am extremely sceptical of giving this level of personal information to any third party but especially a company that just cannot be trusted and has proven itself to be a destructive force in the world. I would not recommend anyone to use this, even if it may lose you access to platforms.

On Reddit there have been concerns among the various European subs and its community. I have encouraged various mods to collectively search for a solution. A move to Lemmy seems the obvious one - also just for the sake of supporting European tech and platforms. Alas, none have acted. The best I got was ‘good idea, we’ll look into it’.

My guess is I am far from the only one to lose access, if not already than soon the same will happen to other users. It may destroy the community that exists there, and my guess is that it’s the largest online truly pan-European community.

Anyway, I’ve signed up for Lemmy / europe.pub a while ago and am eager to use it instead of Reddit. I just hope this place becomes a little more lively.

  • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    268·
    7 days ago

    Just have an 18 year old account! /s

    And welcome, it’s quite nice here if you block the tankies 😁 !

    • lieven@europe.pubOP
      13·
      7 days ago

      Thanks.

      It is all just bs what they tell you. They claim to look at posts and comments, your email address, domain and general behaviour. This email address is about 20yo, runs over a private domain and my comments over the past few years run deep into the political and I’ve referenced my career several times.
      There’s no way you can suspect me a minor based on my available data.

      Data mining is where it’s at. It’s just sad to see the internet of yore slowly getting destroyed by nefarious interests though I am grateful to see communities also fight back.

      To be clear, I am pro-child protection but the measures offered won’t do that but will do harm towards everyone. I am fairly certain I don’t have to explain that here.

      • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        129·
        7 days ago

        Just block lemmy.ml and lemmy.hexbear and you’ll never meet them!

        Tankies are pro dictatorships, like pro Soviet Union, or pro China government, trying to maskerade it under “communism”. A bit like MAGA but with other beliefs.

        • kuiskaaja@lemmy.ml
          911·
          7 days ago

          i love how every single person has their own different definition for “tankie” xD

          almost like it means nothing at this point like the word “woke”

          • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            57·
            6 days ago

            Oh no no no no you aint gonna water that one down.

            Here’s the wikipedia definition

            Or short:

            Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.

                • kuiskaaja@lemmy.ml
                  31·
                  6 days ago

                  not really, i just can’t say any more because this instance’s rules are vague as fuck and i’d like to stay a part of this buyfromeu community instead of getting yeeted from the instance for having different opinions