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.
Most Redditors have yet to leave the platform; we should therefore be welcoming, listen to the reasons they have for leaving Reddit, and direct them to active communities in the Threadiverse in a manner that is more fulfilling than their Reddit experience.
There's already enough hurdles around here in terms of needing to explain the basics of federation and tankie-blocking; if the first reply a new user reads is the equivalent to 'shut up about Reddit and fit in', we aren't going to be getting very many new users.
I also appreciate the fresh user reports on Reddit.
Is there anything specifically you're curious about?
I can't check (can't even access my profile) but my memories are still fairly fresh.
I guess if you focus on just the title and the first few words it seems like a post about Reddit, but it is really about an online community being torn apart by absolutely stupid measures and the people taking the charge there not ensuring it stays together. It is a very large community of Europeans and I do think that's important to acknowledge.
Admittedly I am somewhat oddly emotional about it as it literally just happened and I lost a community I invested in and care about in a split second. This may have coloured my post a bit.
Luckily I had the foresight ensuring to have other ways of contacting the people most important to me over there.
If you have tips, recommendations, anything - I love to hear it.