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.
The only reason for me to be on Reddit is because that’s where the people are. While the European subs, and some others, were generally positive with interesting people there’s of course a lot wrong with the platform.
More generally, I actively try to support European platforms but they tend to be far less populated.
As for specific communities - I can’t join you in a football one as I know nothing about it. Beyond that, it’s a bit exploring for me what’s there.
I know Reddit has pulled a bunch of tricks over the last few years making the platform ever less appealing. Sadly, most people won’t move once they’re stuck in their ways and platforms abuse that. Cory Doctorow has a word for that.