No recommendation
No news or research item is a personal recommendation to deal. Hargreaves Lansdown may not share ShareCast's (powered by Digital Look) views.
(Sharecast News) - Social media platform Reddit has been fined more than 14m for failing to protect the privacy of children, the regulator confirmed on Tuesday.
The Information Commissioner's Office found that Reddit had failed to apply robust age assurance mechanisms, leaving it without a lawful basis for processing the personal information of children under the age of 13.
Under Reddit's terms of service, children under 13 are not permitted to use its platform. However, it did not have measures in place to verify age until July 2025, and the ICO estimates that there a "large number" of young children on the platform.
Reditt started verifying the age of users to comply with the Online Safety Act. However, at the time the ICO warned the San Francisco-based firm that relying on self-declaration presented a risk to children, as it is easy to bypass.
The ICO's investigation also found Reddit had failed to carry out a data protection impact assessment to assess and mitigate risks to children before January 2025. As a result, it ruled that Reddit had failed to use children's personal information lawfully and fined the company 14.47m. It is the largest penalty ever handed down by the ICO.
John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, said: "It is concerning that a company the size of Reddit failed in its legal duty to protect the personal information of UK children.
"Children under 13 had their personal information collected and used in ways they could not understand, consent to or control. That left them potentially exposed to content they should not have seen. This is unacceptable and has resulted in today's fine.
"Relying on users to declare their age themselves is not enough when children may be at risk, and we are focusing now on companies that are primarily using this method. I strongly encourage industry to take note."
Earlier, this month, the ICO fined MediaLab, the owner of imaging sharing platform Imgur, 247,590 for failing to use children's personal information lawfully.
However, Reddit confirmed it planned to appeal.
In a statement, it said: "Reddit doesn't require users to share information about their identities, regardless of age, because we are deeply committed to their privacy and safety.
"The ICO's insistence that we collect more private information on every UK user is counterintuitive and at odds with our strong belief in our users' online privacy and safety."
Shares in New York-listed Reddit, which is 30% owned by Conde Nast parent Advance Publications, were largely unchanged as at 1500 GMT.