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.

  • lievenOP
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    22 hours ago

    Thanks, though depending on where you are across the pond not sure if there’s reason to be jealous. But yes, the EU is going through it at the moment and not sure where things will land eventually.

    There are several decent sources but for mainstream media I would recommend the EU section of the Brussels Times and the EU Observer. Dave Keating is one of the best independent journalists who’s not afraid to call things out for what they are. France24 is pretty decent too and free.

    • pnwpixel@programming.dev
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      1 day ago

      Stateside. Unfortunately.

      Added these to my rss list, thank you for that. I hope we all get through this era of stupidity and malice.