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 “noreply@redditmail.com”, 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: prospectus@morganstanley.com; 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: prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com; 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: prospectus-eq_fi@jpmorgan.com; 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: dg.prospectus_requests@bofa.com.
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
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.
You might want to crosspost your story to !uklaw@feddit.uk. But if you do that be clever with your phrasing so as to not seem to be asking for advice, but rather for information. E.g. is there any case law for this situation…
(I’m assuming you’re in the UK because other commenters focused on UK law)
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?
I can only conclude that this is some kind of scam
That depends on your framing.
Is it a legitimate attempt to sell shares? Absolutely. Completely legal, disregarding OP’s claim of a GDPR violation. There might be wiggle-room to suggest this is some flavor of price manipulation, but I’m not a lawyer or SEC investigator. In order to IPO, there’s a compliance framework that makes this functionally identical to any other IPO on the market.
Are some people who buy this IPO going to be left holding the bag? In a round-about “we’re all playing the same game, but also not” way, yes. For an instant, people will be holding shares in Reddit at the IPO price, and speculation on value will drive that up on the back of the IPO itself. It might plummet later the same day, it may not. But what is going to really burn people is when the primary shareholders “cash out” and sell a huge chunk of that stock. That usually has the effect of signaling that the company isn’t worth what it was anymore. It’s a gamble where the house can destroy your bid before you can manage to pawn your chips off onto the next guy.
From a spectator standpoint, where this may get interesting is where Reddit IPO intersects with r/wallstreetbets.
Edit: dividends are also a thing, but I never hear about that outside of what mutual funds and 401ks are up to. As someone who has no idea how Reddit does or can actually make money, I’m going to guess that’s not going to be a benefit of being a long-term shareholder.
Don’t give websites your email, what a silly thing to do
They sent one to my deleted account that was literally called GDPR_Violation lol
There really needs to be a resource where data subjects can pool their evidence and collaborate on GDPR actions against common data controllers.
lmfao
0 fucks given
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
Did you post a lot? Do you have email notifications turned on?
My old account has… a lot (six digits worth), of comment karma. But I think I posted a grand total of three times in the last ten years or so. I also have notifications turned off. So, no IPO notification for me.
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.
I have 40k karma on an 12 year old account and was invited. Obviously not buying that sit tho
There are a couple other factors. Were you a mod? Did you ever participate in one of reddit’s community programs like the Helper Program or Mod Council?
The 3 criteria are MVP status, which is based on participation in certain programs, Karma, or Mod Actions.
Just chiming in, 34k karma (only 4 post karma) and haven’t posted for 9 months. Never a mod. I also got the IPO offer. Think I was gifted gold one time.
Yeah I just got an invite as well and I haven’t logged in since the protest that brought the first wave of us here. So karma has to be a deciding factor, I had over 100k I think so that would be the only reason I got an invite.
100k is the threshold for the second round of invitations.
They must be into round 4, I have never been a mod.
ah i thought it was based on activity (though Reddit wrongly likes to correlate the two)
People should express interest, and go through whatever steps just short of actually buying
I too got an email and haven’t posted at all since the API change.
If I really was in the top 35k before that, then at least I know quitting Reddit made some kind of dent in their content.
Karma was a relevant factor. I guess if yoi had a good amount of karma it may have contributed to it.
I got the email, also… And like you, I’ve not used reddit since the api BS. I’ve not logged in, commented or anything since just before sync stopped working.
oh shit me too i think lol
Does the GDPR have teeth against this kind of violation? Could Reddit be hit hard with violation fees?
If the user resides in Europe then yeah. This means they didn’t follow GDPR and still retain data on user(s).
It’s in the GDPR jurisdiction but Reddit accounts are anonymous AFAIK. IMO the GDPR does not protect anonymous data.
/cc @Gork@lemm.ee
E-mail counts as user identifying information per the GDPR, so clearly they have kept user identifying information so the GDPR applies.
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.
Right, so e-mail address together with IP address would then make the e-mail that of an identifiable user under Art.4(1). So the OP needs to find out if an IP address was logged and retained in connection with the email address.
I received one for a dormant account, but am Canadian so I couldn’t use their IPO insider advantage even if I wanted to
Makes me think this thing is gonna Drill immediately after launch, take everyone’s lunch, and eventually rebound (or get bought by Meta/Alphabet/Microsoft/Apple on the cheap)
Its a bad bet imo too. The enshitification of reddit excelerates on an exponential curve, like a shitty inverse of the tech it is based on.
How good is an app if you feel better the less you use it?
$$$
Excuse my ignorance but how is this a violation?
GDPR requires deleting data if you ask them to delete data. How did they get your email address if they supposedly deleted your information?
Is deleting an account the same as asking them to delete it though?
Gdpr also requires data only to be kept no longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. Deleting your account, even it isn’t a request to delete your data removes any purpose for keeping it.
That’s more for people booking flights and what not. With an account, they need a way to contact you if you’ve done something illegal, among a host of other things. It’s not the same scenario.
Until you specifically request it, it’s not gonna happen, and even then, they still need something to keep to trace back to you for legal reasons.
GDPR also requieres that you use the data for the appropiate cause that the user opted in to. So if they have the data for legal stuff this would still be a violation.
How so? The person never requested it to be deleted for that, you consented to all of this when you made your account and linked it to an email.
Article 6 states that there are only 6 reasons why you can process data the one applying here is a
If the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data;
Informed consent has to be given freely and for each purpose individually each consent option one has to consent to has to be opt in and has to be singular not bundeled.reddit doesnt do that therfore their only right is to use the mail as part of the service. With the deletion of this account they are not further allowed to use this mail for anything else except legal.
That’s wrong
Let’s assume that the dude requested for a deletion of his account (specifically - not all his data) of the basis of gdpr and the execution of his data subject rights; that doesn’t exclude the possibility for reddit to keep his contact details for specific purposes based on the legitimate interest of reddit. Or at least they could play with the argument.
They can keep it but they are not allowed to use it as of article 5&6.
Do they even have a presence in Europe?
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
Ah, you’ve got them now!
Does the GDPR still apply to the UK after Brexit? I thought it was a EU law.
Upon leaving the EU any laws that were in use made 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.🇪🇺🇬🇧
They gave you a do-over. Things could change in the term, but my expectations are low. See: the US
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.
The GDPR is a not a directive. It’s a regulation. Nontheless, I read that the GDPR was specifically mirrored into UK law with a couple minor modifications.
But to answer @automaton@lemmy.world, AFAIK the #GDPR does not apply in this situation anyway because Reddit accounts are “anonymous”. The GDPR only protects identified people.
An e-mail address is “user identifying information” per GDPR, so if the UK version does not differ from the EU version on this (and it would be pretty weird if it did), it applies.
That’s how I understand the UK situation too, however what is anonymous is left much for debate & sometimes local best-practices. Like, a user can be identifiable by their posts, or even full name.
If I create an anonymous account but put what looks like a real name in the username field, and sign all posts with that real-looking name, who’s to say it’s really my name? Then suppose I lose my internet connection but want to exercise my right to be forgotten. The GDPR enables people to make an Art.17 request in writing but the GDPR also mandates that data controllers identify who the request comes from (so Mallory does not request deletion of Alice’s records). If a user ad hoc puts their name on everything then mails a request with a copy of their ID card which matches the name they put on everything, it’s a bit off because a company who does not ID users would not normally have the infrastructure in place to support GDPR requests. (and that’s a good thing… it’s good that there’s incentive to support the practice of offering anonymous accounts) But here’s the other problem: the ID mechanism itself must be minimal. A data controller cannot demand a full copy of your ID card if they can verify using something less intrusive like date of birth to verify you. Perhaps in this case a copy of the ID card would be necessary. OTOH, names are not generally unique, which would mean I could use my ID card to request deletion of all records of other people who have the same name.
As a practical matter, we also have to figure that DPAs are extremely lazy. I’ve filed many Art.77 reports with strong irrefutable evidence and the cases just sit for years. I cannot see a DPA being motivated to work on a case that Reddit can easily defend. OP’s best move is to look at local anti-spam laws (I’m guessing it’s spam… I do not have access to the Cloudflared image the OP posted).
When is that going to happen? I would be very happy to have you back in the club 😊
It would take years for the UK to rejoin. First there’d have to be public polling, referendum and a desire by the sitting government to start the process then it’ll be however long it takes for the EU to debate the application and then the UK needs all members to accept the application. Currently neither the two largest UK parties want to even re-open the brexit debates. So basically it’d be at least over a decade.
We could maybe be on a Norway-style deal sooner than that though… Some things like single market access or Erasmus membership don’t necessarily require the long process of EU accession
Maybe but that would also mean people from let’s say Poland can live and work in the UK right? I thought that was one of the bigger Brexit points.
That would require Freedom Of Movement, which from my experience living in the UK at the time of the Leave Referendum was the main thing driving the Leave vote, closely followed by the UK having to follow EU directives (i.e. the whole “sovereignty” malarkey).
Looking around (not the just UK), xenophobia has become even stronger since, not weaker and Norway-style is still mainly “following EU directives”, though with some opt-outs in things not to do with Trade or Freedom Of Movement.
Also this time around it would be Spain as an EU member whilst the UK tried to get in (the reverse of last time) so they would probably demand to get Gibraltar back as condition for their vote (which is required since a unanimous vote is required). More in general pretty much any EU member with a bone to pick with the UK would get their chance, which might also be interesting for the likes of Greece (better make sure there isn’t a leftwing government in Greece given how the UK literally intervened militarilly to make sure at the end of WWII that the Fascists ended up in power in Greece, a dictatorship that lasted until the 80s).
Ugh, it sucks to be taken revenge on for things that you literally weren’t even around for to be able to stop.
I think it’s only unfair for people who aren’t nationalists.
Those who think they’re important because they hail from an important country, on the other hand, deserve the bad along with the perceived good. Sadly in my experience Britain is thick with nationalism, heavilly promoted even by the slant of international news on TV (were Britain’s importance to the rest is always exagerated), much more than other countries I lived in.
IMHO, Brexit was powered by that excessive nationalism and even the Remain side displayed a heavilly nationalist streak (I remember the “we should stay and change the EU from the inside” argument, implying that 50 million Britons should lead the other 470 million in the EU) so it’s only fair if others reciprocate.
Personally I think most Britons deserve it, though definitelly not all.
This is more probable, because there’s no way the UK is ever going to accept to abandon the pound sterling and migrate to the euro after re-entry.
Then again, a ton of countries haven’t accepted the Euro yet even though they pinky promised they would. Look at Poland
They’re still forced to adopt it as soon as they reach some requirements. The worst player is Sweden, that’s actively trying not to reach the requirements so they can keep the crown
Plus, it’s unlikely that the UK will get the same terms they had when they left. That will have to be negotiated as well.
would we really though? think about them driving around in their austin powers union jack painted minis, just whipping around random roundabouts saying “I say” and “buh herr hear haar”
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.
Yeah but brexit
Brexit means Biscuit!!!
And I just reminded myself that school kids across the UK have started dirty takling each other, with no intention of getting the ball, while shouting “Brexit means Brexit!!”
Well… now I’m glad I didn’t bother trying to scrub my data off the site ;-)
Never really bought the notion that they weren’t backing it all up.
But I gotta say thank you for helping to make Reddit great! The only thing I still regret is not trying harder to contribute when I was enjoying the site.
