Reddit sent me invitations to their IPO to my "deleted" accounts! That's a GDPR violation!

ChrislyBear@lemmy.world to Reddit@lemmy.ml – 1095 points –

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

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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 (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 @coffeeClean@infosec.pub 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It's either/or. I've never been one, but since I had over 200k Karma I was in round 1.

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

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.

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.

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.

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They’re getting desperate to find bag holders.

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.

They don't have to. There is no "pump" phase, we are already in the "dump" phase and Reddit is just dumping their stock (or gonna be when they IPO).

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.

You should be very VERY vocal about how your account, insensitive name, was asked to own part of Reddit and how willing you are to do that, in order to make sure that the world knows that reddit is owned in part by insensitive name..

Tells you about how much karma you have to be an investor

I think it's more than that.

The price for these shares is probably not cheap for the individual, but won't raise a ton of money internally in the grand scheme of things. At least, that's how it works for employee options and phantom stock. The disparity here is due it's utility as a retention mechanism. The idea is that, if invested, you're less likely to jump ship until after IPO. With options and phantom stock, they typically have a "vestment period", so you have to wait before you can get your money back out.

In this case, Reddit knows it needs its moderators and power users, but can't afford to employ those people. So we get this weird middle-ground where they entice people to stick around, but they're still not employees. As a bonus to Reddit Inc., these "investors" will provide ballast for the IPO, because I'm betting this stuff has a vestment period that extends well past the IPO date. Seeing this all on a balance sheet will make other investors feel a lot better about buying or even holding shares when the IPO kicks off.

What I really don't like about this is that they mention the "DSP" and define it, but are coy about what the actual investment instrument is. What kind of shares are these? What is the price per share?

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

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

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

And what jurisdiction does the gdpr have over servers hosted in America?

We're all still waiting for the court case that sets this precedent.

*According to Article 3(2), a business that targets individuals in the EU for offering goods or services (even if it’s free) or monitoring their behaviour falls under the scope of GDPR. Monitoring activities such as tracking through cookies or other technologies, behavioural advertising, geolocation, market surveys etc performed by a non-EU business can be subject to GDPR. A US business that has no establishment in the EU, but sells goods or services to consumers in the EU, will fall under the scope of GDPR in the US. Note that the law extends to any resident of the EU, irrespective of citizenship. *

Source: https://www.cookieyes.com/blog/gdpr-in-the-us-a-checklist-for-compliance/

Many US companies were fined, it doesn't matter where your servers are, it matters if you target EU customers. In this case, Reddit very clearly targeted EU citizens.

Can you cite a case where an American company with no holdings or dealings in the EU was fined successfully?

If the company has no infrastructure within the jurisdiction of the gdpr, how can they hope to enforce it?

Reddit has holdings in Dublin, Ireland, where they have a large contingent of employees. thus they are required to adhere to GDPR.

IANAL and this obviously won't happen (because it's one of if not the stupidest way to go about it right from the get go) but still:

They can literally demand any and all European ISPs block all their traffic, they can still raise the fees and if they don't pay accrue interest/late claims on it. Will this change anything? Not immediately, but the moment that company does anything the courts can reach they are in a whole lot of trouble.

Anyway besides this are there really companies that are so US centric that a European court can't (like really absolutely can't) reach them?

Reddit has employees and servers in Europe, including EU countries. GDPR most definitely applies.

Wasnt it only for us residents? Gdpr is european

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.

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

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.

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

I’m not sure how they pick their IPO scam emails.

I had a ton of Reddit accounts. Only my oldest one from like 14 years ago got the special email.

Not if they provided incorrect info during signing up. Which is very likely if they received an email only US accounts have been getting.

Aussie here with deleted accounts getting the email.

There isn't even an option to select the Country of residence when creating a reddit account.

But did they have anything or selected listed that they were from Europe, I wonder? Like, I tend to bounce around on my ip address with my vpn.

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

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.

Delete is not same thing, as requesting to destroying all identifiable data of you.

This is what I don’t get. How are Reddit accounts not pseudo/anonymous? Back when I had an account (~5+ years ago at latest) they had nothing personally identifiable on me, in which case there are no GDPR rights to speak of. Even if I were to make an Art.17 request and go above and beyond by supplying a copy of my ID card with the request, Reddit would have no way to even verify that my ID is associated to the acct.

Email and nickname are considered identifiable data by gdpr, but that's it. If they remove those, it is enough.

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

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

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

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

Didn't they make a loss?

So 4% of negative global revenue is... a profit?

That mean they get paid?

Revenue is all the money they have earned, not the money that they can necessarily use or "withdrawal" and run away with. If you spend 1 million and earn 0,5 million you still have a revenue of 0,5 million (and a loss of 0,5 million)

So yes they can still get fined (obviously) but it's extremely unlikely that they will be fined the maximum amount possible. Especially for something small like this. As far as I know the DPAs has never fined anywhere close to 4% of global annual revenue. They are probably saving the higher fines for really serious violations.

It probably gets way more complicated with tax and all that, but I ain't no accountant so I dunno.

Edit: The highest fine ever (since May 2023) is for Meta at 1,3 Billion USD and that's roughly 1 % of their global annual revenue (116,6 Billion USD) for 2022. That's half of the maximum fine for a normal violation and one-quarter the maximum fine for a serious violation.

Yupes, not just Revenue but actually Global Revenue.

It's not exactly hard for a large transnational company to create accounting losses or even move revenue around to appear in some other country (usually using elements of intellectual property, such as costs for licensing Trademarks or Copyrighted material, which is why large Tech companies love it), but ultimatelly, money coming in anywhere in the World is money coming in anywhere in the World, and you can't really avoid declaring it short of outright accounting fraud (something which can result in prison time for the people involved and it's pretty impossible to hide unless they're cash or crypto payments).

As Revenue is pretty straightforwardly "money in" (no taxes, no depreciation, no expenses - such as paying "trademark licensing costs" to a daughter company in a tax haven, which is a way of moving profits around - considered) it's pretty hard to manipulate and Globally means you can't avoid it being counted by trickeries such as having a daughter company in a different country be the one that receives payments.

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 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.🇪🇺🇬🇧

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.

/cc @d00ery@lemmy.world

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).

(edit) more clarity here, hopefully → https://infosec.pub/comment/6975469

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.

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.

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.

Hmm tbh I don't know which of the internationak frameworks requires freedom of movement. Norway have it bc theyre in Schenghen, we weren't in that but we still had it because of the EU. Idk if Iceland have freedom of movement

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

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"

They gave you a do-over. Things could change in the term, but my expectations are low. See: the US

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!!"

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Did you delete the account or ask for data deletion?

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.

Is a right of erasure possible at this stage?

I assume they still store the context of a deleted post somewhere and that the AI would still access it.

With cloud or tape backups, it's nearly impossible to fully delete all data.

By design, you would want to protect it from accidental or intentional deletion.

I don't know how any company can fully comply with GDPR to be honest.

I think the whole discussion is moot when the data is “anonymous”.

But suppose they had the OP’s name on file linked to the acct thus making the GDPR applicatable. There would still be a violation under GDPR Art.5 (minimization) and Art.25 (protection by design). But it is probably quite difficult to make a minimization case; lawyers have to work hard. Much stronger and effective to make an Art.17 claim, which indeed requires making the request.

An e-mail is "user identifying information" per GDPR.

So it's not considered anonymous.

That phrase (“user identifying information”) does not appear in the GDPR text that I have. Do you have a page or section reference?

According to the Commission, “an email address such as name.surname@company.com;” is an example of “personal data” [presumably from Art.4(1)]. But it’s interesting to note that that example obviously ties the address to an identifiable person. Is that the OP’s case? (I can’t see their Cloudflare-jailed screen shot)

The EC also says “an email address such as info@company.com” is not an example of personal data.

This should really be covered by an EDPB Guideline, but I’m not finding one.

Yeah, you are correct and the wording is inded "personal data".

I vaguelly remember it was treated the same as a phone number.

It's been years since I had to look into the GDPR.

I’m trying to get to the bottom of this because a chunk of my data & activity is tied to nothing but my email address which always deliberately excludes personal identifiers and I do everything over Tor.

GDPR recital 26 seems the most relevant. It’s complicated but note that the GDPR clearly does not apply to legal persons (aka moral persons aka companies). So a data controller must at a minimum have a way of knowing the account belongs to a natural person. Which IMO requires being linked to other data like IP address. Though even that is a fuzzy because IP databases on whether an IP address is residential boils down to guesswork.

Tempting to read wp136 which predates the GDPR but seems quite relevant. It’s possibly the most exact answer unless there is a closely related CJEU ruling.

Well, from your second source an e-mail is personal data (as explicitly said so in that document), related by "content" and in this specific case if Reddit is indeed sending IPO e-mails to some rather than others depending on Karma also by "result" (though it would be the combination of e-mail and Karma that is the related by "result" part as it's not the e-mail itself that causes the differentiated treatment between individuals) to an "identifiable" individual (possibly also "identified" depending if the e-mail address contains the person's full name) (the example in that document for dynamic IP addresses seems the one relevant for e-mails).

As for the 4th condition, that of being a natural person, as long as the OP received the e-mail on a personal address rather than a company address, that's pretty obviously fullfilled.

As per that document, if the piece of data they hold fullfills all 4 conditions, it's covered by the GDPR.

I did the whole "GDPR, delete my stuff dance". They replied with "you have to delete your posts yourself". I didn't budge, gave them the required 30 day ultimatum, but they gave zero fucks.

I did the same, but i deleted my comments and posts, they brought all back, i guess they fuck around.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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?

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.

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)

When companies get desperate they start flagrantly breaking the law.

We should all buy one share and then brigade shareholder votes

(This is not a real suggestion; it sounds illegal don’t do this but it’s a funny thought)

It isn't illegal but I'm not to sure that they will be selling voting shares to the average redditors. They tightly control who can actually make decisions.

it say's "be US resident". Why do they believe your a US resident? Maybe using vpn when signing up huh.

If only they on reddit were so smart to check such stuff before sending the email. I also got the email here in EU and I never used VPN in my life.

Same here in Canada.

I'd be curious what the "cutoff" date is for eligibility for this. It could be that they generated the list of accounts they'd be sending this offer to some time ago, and OP deleted his account after that point.

I've never used a VPN, and from numerous posts, many of them in my native, non-english language, it would be easy to derive that I'm not an American citizen. I've even stated that fact in a number of posts.

I still got an invitation. I reported it as spam.

I received it as an Australian and I don’t use VPNs.

They blanket sent the IPO shit to every big account.

Don’t give websites your email, what a silly thing to do

You are on a privacy-offending Cloudflare site (#LemmyWorld), so Tor users are blocked from seeing your Cloudflare-jailed image. If you care about privacy you will bounce from that instance.

Without seeing the image, I have to ask how an anonymous user gets #GDPR rights. Or has #Reddit started supporting an identification mechanism of some kind? When I start the reg process, it asks for an email address, username, and pw, not a first + lastname (but my test stopped when a Google reCAPTCHA push was attempted). I have zero sympathy for Reddit -- they are rotten to the core scumbags, but I do not see how the GDPR can be applied to anonymous accounts.

(edit) I gather from other comments you must have posted an email. Would be great if you could copy the text of the email into the body of your post so everyone can see it and so people using screen readers can hear it. Thanks!

Will do! Just a moment...

Thanks!

The To: address in the header would be interesting. Of course, you wouldn’t want to disclose it verbatim here but it might be useful to have a rough idea. Was it Firstname.Lastname@yadayada.com or some variation of that, or was it more like commonNickname@yadayada.com? Some people here think it doesn’t matter, that it’s inherently personal info, but the European Commission says it matters. It’s not hard and fast; there are varying shades of gray here. Maybe they kept logs of your IP address and maybe that makes a difference. You might want to read WP136 (I have yet to read that).

I would love to see action taken against Reddit, if anything just to burden their lawyers and create some costs for them. But I doubt it will go anywhere. GDPR enforcement is such a shit-show in Europe. Even dealing with clearly blatant violations that are wholly internal to Europe which should irrefutably incur penalties, simple obvious cases are being ignored by DPAs. So I have little confidence that this cross-border case against a non-EU data controller would actually get results when the law is not really concrete. The one factor in your favor is that Reddit is somewhat high-profile which might take a DPA’s interest.

I don’t think a “delete my account” button constitutes an Article 17 request. It removes the purpose of processing to some extent, which then relies on the data minimization principle (Art.5). Reddit can do a bit of hand-waving to make excuses like needing to retain your email address in case one of your posts sparks a legal inquiry. Your case would be stronger if you had submitted an explicit Art.17 request to Reddit.

From the email:

Per our lawyercats, we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions.

I wonder if that statement might be actionable. Art.12 and 13 require Reddit to identify a data controller with a point of contact and to tell you your GDPR rights (IIUC). And here they are outright stating in effect “we don’t want to hear from you”. I would stress that in your GDPR complaint, not just the misuse of your email which you expected to be deleted. But note they do provide an address at the bottom of that msg. Although that angle of attack might require Reddit having a way to know you have ties to a GDPR region after the supposedly “deleted” your acct.

Also, I would look into any anti-spam laws your country has. There may be a higher degree of legal actionability there.

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