Reddit announced on Wednesday that it will be removing the ability for some users to opt out of ad personalisation based on their activity on the platform.
The announcement came along with several other updates to the company’s privacy, advertising, and location settings from Reddit’s head of privacy, Jutta Williams. Williams justified the change by saying that Reddit “requires very little personal information” from its users and that it would allow the company to “better predict which ad may be most relevant to you.”
The vast majority of
Reddit users, according to Williams, "will see no change to their ads," and users who previously opted out of ad personalisation "will not result in seeing more ads or sharing on-platform activity with advertisers." The platform's advertising settings will be updated during the following few weeks.
The changes also seemed to upset users, and to those, Williams responded by saying, “To clarify, this update does not change the way we collect or share data. This data informs how we target ads on our platform. We do not share your information or activity with third parties for advertising outside Reddit. To learn more, visit our Help Center and Privacy Policy.”
Exceptions have been provided for "select countries," albeit the particular areas have not been stated. European countries may be exempt from the mandatory opt-in because the change would likely put Reddit in direct contradiction with the EU's GDPR standards, which require corporations to obtain express consent to collect or use personal data for use in activities such as advertising.
Earlier this year,
Meta made similar allowances for European Facebook and Instagram users in order to comply with EU privacy legislation.
The Reddit changes will also allow users to see fewer ads from certain categories such as gambling, alcohol, weight reduction, and dating. The company claims that its approach of combining manual tagging with machine learning to classify ads will not be perfect at first, but that it will improve over time.
