Reddit Privacy News

Regulatory action reported by The Register: UK data watchdog fines Reddit £14.47M for letting kids slip past the gate (also covered by BBC)

Reddit filed suit against Anthropic in California Superior Court, alleging Anthropic scraped Reddit content over 100,000 times — even after claiming to stop — and had been training Claude on Reddit posts since at least December 2021 without authorization. The complaint included breach of contract, unjust enrichment, trespass to chattels, tortious interference, and unfair competition claims. The case moved to mediation in August 2025.

The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced a formal investigation into Reddit's handling of children's data, examining how Reddit verifies the ages of child users and ensures services are tailored to children's needs under the UK Children's Code (Age Appropriate Design Code). The ICO subsequently issued a notice of intent to impose a monetary penalty on Reddit.

Reddit and OpenAI announced a partnership granting OpenAI access to Reddit's Data API for real-time content to train its LLMs. Reddit content would be integrated into ChatGPT responses, and OpenAI became a Reddit advertising partner. Separately, the FTC disclosed a non- public inquiry into Reddit's AI data licensing practices in Reddit's amended S-1 filing, examining the sale and licensing of user-generated content to third parties.

Reddit's SEC filing ahead of its IPO revealed data licensing arrangements worth $203 million over 2–3 years, with a $60 million/year deal later confirmed to be with Google. The filing disclosed that Reddit's content had already been used by AI companies and that data licensing was expected to become a significant revenue stream. Users had not been directly consulted about the commercial sale of their contributions.

Reddit updated its privacy policy to explicitly allow data licensing to third parties for the purpose of training AI models. The updated terms gave Reddit broad rights to license user-generated content, removing previous ambiguity about commercial reuse. This came months after the API pricing changes that locked out third-party apps from accessing Reddit data.

Reddit announced it would charge $0.24 per 1,000 API calls, effectively shutting down popular third-party apps like Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync. Apollo's developer estimated annual costs of $20 million. Over 8,500 subreddits went private in June 2023 in one of the largest community protests in platform history. Critics argued the real motive was controlling data access ahead of Reddit's IPO and AI licensing deals.

Attackers successfully phished a Reddit employee using a spoofed intranet login page, gaining access to internal documents, code, and some internal business systems. Contact information for hundreds of current and former employees was accessed. In June 2023, the BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware group claimed responsibility, alleging 80 GB of compressed data was stolen and demanding a $4.5 million ransom, which Reddit refused to pay.

Reddit quarantined r/The_Donald, one of the largest political subreddits, for repeated content policy violations including threats of violence against Oregon police and public officials. The quarantine added a warning portal, removed the subreddit from search and feeds, and cut off revenue opportunities. This was the most high- profile enforcement of Reddit's 2015 quarantine system and demonstrated the platform's willingness to act against politically prominent communities.

Reddit raised $300 million at a $3 billion valuation, with Chinese tech giant Tencent investing $150 million. The investment sparked major user backlash over privacy and censorship concerns, given Tencent's role as an architect of China's internet surveillance and censorship infrastructure. Users flooded Reddit with content banned in China as protest. Privacy advocates raised concerns about Tencent's data collection practices and the potential for user data to reach the Chinese government.

Reddit disclosed a data breach that occurred between June 14-18, 2018, discovered on June 19. Attackers intercepted SMS-based two- factor authentication codes to compromise employee accounts at Reddit's cloud and source code hosting providers. The breach exposed a complete copy of all Reddit data from 2005-2007 (usernames, hashed passwords, emails, all public and private messages) and email digest logs from June 3-17, 2018 linking usernames to email addresses.

Reddit rewrote its privacy policy for GDPR compliance ahead of the EU regulation's enforcement date. Unusually, Reddit actually decreased the word count and reading time of its policy while achieving the easiest reading level among major platforms. The update introduced GDPR data subject access request support, new user privacy controls including the ability to limit personalized advertising and third-party data sharing, and made privacy settings publicly accessible.

Reddit launched its major site redesign (new.reddit.com) as the default experience, introducing inline native ads that closely resembled regular user posts. The redesign implemented a new analytics stack with enhanced user tracking capabilities and stripped referrer data from outbound links. The redesign significantly expanded Reddit's ability to collect behavioral data for advertising purposes.

Reddit launched a completely revamped self-serve advertising platform with improved targeting capabilities, daily budget controls, campaign scheduling, and enhanced analytics. The new system replaced the prepay model with post-delivery billing and added support for multiple creatives per campaign. This expansion of Reddit's advertising infrastructure laid the groundwork for increased user data collection for ad targeting.

Reddit published its 2015 transparency report with the warrant canary statement conspicuously removed. The 2014 report had stated Reddit had never received a National Security Letter or FISA order; the absence of this language in the 2015 report strongly implied Reddit had received a classified government surveillance request. CEO Steve Huffman responded to questions by saying he had 'been advised not to say anything one way or the other.'

Reddit updated its privacy policy extending IP address retention from 90 to 100 days to measure usage across a full quarter, and began rolling out support for the Do Not Track (DNT) browser header. The policy also added a dedicated section on mobile data collection and disclosed that mobile advertising identifiers, IP addresses, and subreddit lists would be shared with advertisers.

Returning CEO Steve Huffman announced a major content policy overhaul introducing the 'quarantine' system for extremely offensive communities. Quarantined subreddits required explicit user opt- in, were excluded from search and feeds, and lost custom styling. Several racist subreddits were banned outright. The new policy drew clearer lines between permitted and prohibited content, replacing the previous near-absolute free speech approach.

Under CEO Ellen Pao, Reddit banned five subreddits for fostering harassment, including r/FatPeopleHate (150,000+ subscribers), r/hamplanethatred, r/neofag, r/transfags, and r/shitniggerssay. This marked the first time Reddit enforced a harassment-based content policy at scale. The action triggered massive user backlash, with Pao herself becoming a target of harassment and a change.org petition demanding her resignation.

Reddit implemented its first ban on involuntary pornography, prohibiting the posting of sexually explicit images or videos of individuals without their consent. The policy allowed victims to report content to administrators for removal. However, the burden remained on victims to initiate takedown requests, and there were no special penalties for violators beyond standard Reddit sanctions.

Reddit published its first-ever transparency report covering 2014. The report revealed Reddit received 55 government and civil requests for user data and complied with 58% of them. Reddit also included a warrant canary statement: 'As of January 29, 2015, reddit has never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information.'

Reddit updated its privacy policy to explicitly detail how it tracks users, particularly on mobile. The policy disclosed that Reddit shares users' mobile unique advertising identifiers, IP addresses, and lists of subscribed subreddits with advertisers. A new section on mobile data collection was added, along with instructions for opting out of mobile advertising tracking on Reddit's official apps.

Reddit banned r/TheFappening, a subreddit that had amassed over 100,000 subscribers in a single day after nearly 500 private celebrity photos were leaked online. Reddit initially declined to remove the content citing its free-speech policy and US law, but eventually banned the subreddit on copyright grounds (DMCA). The incident exposed the inadequacy of Reddit's content policies for handling non-consensual intimate imagery at scale.

Reddit updated its privacy policy to provide additional detail on how the platform collects and uses information. The changes were announced on May 15, 2014 and became effective June 6, 2014. The update aimed to make legal documents easier to read and more transparent, and was prominently displayed on Reddit's front page with updated tags next to links to the legal agreements.

Reddit published a comprehensive rewrite of its privacy policy, created by legal consultant Lauren Gelman (formerly of the EFF). The new policy was crowdsourced with Reddit user feedback and was designed to keep user participation 'as anonymous as you choose,' pledging not to share data without consent unless required by law, with a commitment to notify users of legal requests unless prohibited by court order.

Gawker journalist Adrian Chen exposed Reddit power-user u/violentacrez as Michael Brutsch, who had moderated subreddits including r/CreepShots, which hosted sexualized images of women taken without consent. Multiple major subreddits banned links to Gawker in retaliation, citing Reddit's policy against posting personal information. Reddit CEO Yishan Wong defended the content under free speech principles while criticizing the Gawker ban.

Reddit banned the r/jailbait subreddit after CNN's Anderson Cooper ran an investigative segment condemning the forum for hosting sexualized images of minors. The subreddit had been one of the most visited on the site. Reddit's general manager had previously defended the subreddit under free speech principles, but the ban was triggered after users began soliciting nude images of an underage girl within the forum.