this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2021
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Reddit is making verifying emails to post semi-mandatory. It will be harder to use throwaway accounts for privacy on reddit and might cause a small privacy migration away from reddit. (midwest.social)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Gnotek@midwest.social to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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We might be able to capitalize on this somehow to move users to the fediverse?

Hi mods,

This afternoon we will be releasing a couple of improvements to Automoderator.

First, there is now a verified email attribute available. This means that you can check if the redditor submitting content to your community has a verified email associated with their account. Think of it as an automated way of looking at their trophy case to see if they have the “Verified Email” trophy.

Mods use account age & karma restrictions in an effort to stop low effort participation but these often catch out well intentioned redditors. We hope that by exposing if a redditor has a verified email to automod you’ll be able to remove some of these karma restrictions and have a more effective way at identifying bad-intentioned redditors.
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[–] lobsterasteroid@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

/r/Linux has an official policy of removing and scrubbing comments from non-verified accounts and threatens users with possible "action" if they keep commenting without verifying their email.

The threatening message the automod sends now told me to switch to Lemmy if i don't like it, so I did.

I can totally understand how not requiring email verification enables harrassment etc, it's just odd because reddit has literally always been carefully structured to enable and promote harrassment. It's why their user block feature stops you from seeing content by users you've blocked, but it doesn't stop them from seeing and interacting with you.

I started using non-verified accounts on reddit precisely because of how inherently unsafe the platform is by design.

[–] Windows97@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago

the automod sends now told me to switch to Lemmy if i don’t like it, so I did

lmao nice

[–] Yujiri@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

The threatening message the automod sends now told me to switch to Lemmy if i don’t like it, so I did.

🤣 that's awesome! We need to get all the centralized platforms to say that :D

[–] Goldmaster@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

But wouldn't people use services like trash mail.com and temp mail? Unless reddit end up stopping them?

[–] Gnotek@midwest.social 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

personally, i'd just jump ship to lemmy and not have to deal with those extra steps. I haven't opened up a mastodon acct for the same reason

[–] SrEstegosaurio@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But in Mastodon it depends on the instance, no? (I don't really know)

[–] Gnotek@midwest.social 1 points 2 years ago

If you ever find a mastodon instance that doesn't require email, definitely link me to it!

[–] downdaemon@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

there are blacklists for services like those, any site that gives a shit can subscribe to them relatively cheap

[–] kyleisguilty@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

it's a good compromise between privacy and safety, right-wingers have been using email-less reddit accounts for harassment for quite a while

[–] DPUGT@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

I'm not sure how it is a "good compromise" in any sense of that phrase. What is "safe" about this? What is "private" about it?

All it does is confirm that one person who signs up for reddit once signed up for an online email account somewhere. We are not stuck in 1998, where your one and only email account was created when you signed up for Comcast or Verizon DSL.

This makes the signup process for reddit slightly more convoluted, and maybe makes them spend an extra 6 minutes doing so. This is an insufficient amount of delay to expect them to have any life-changing epiphanies.

It does not prevent the harassment you are concerned about. It adds no safety.

It isn't private... as unimaginative as most people are, chances are that you can guess email addresses from usernames even if reddit does not reveal them. It actively reduces privacy, and much more so than you imply.

This is so far into the realm of security theater that if just stand there and wait 30 seconds, the costume department will come by and change you into your clown outfit.

[–] DPUGT@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

I'm not sure it's possible to capitalize on this. It's simply not an outrage-inducing development. There might be hundreds that notice, and dozens that care, but of those most will be too lazy and unfamiliarity-averse to do anything about it.

[–] purplerabbit@forum.purplerabbit.xyz 2 points 2 years ago

Lemmy for the win!