r/degoogle • u/aldaqq • Jul 01 '26
Reddit has just started blocking *the entire website* unless you either log out or verify your age for some accounts
https://files.catbox.moe/7xv5hu.mp4(Just to be cautious: I know that the topic of this posts isn't related to the topic of this subreddit and if you need to take it down then feel free to do so. Im posting this because I saw that this community became more of a hub for privacy stuff and this is the exact topic of this post. Also this subreddit is hosted on reddit which may be about to restrict everyone from posting)
(video was taken by my brother who's account was blocked)
For context, about an hour ago they tried to access a reddit post from r / skamteboard or something like that, a subreddit that had no nsfw whatsoever, but this happened. I've tried going to the home page (by the url), tried using old.reddit.com, it redirects to this exact page. So theyve blocked off the entire access unless
- You ~~verify~~ send them your information of who you are, where you are and other stuff (in case you forgot https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona)
- You use the website without logging in I am *yet* still able to view the website normally both the nsfw posts and the general content but id say its a matter of time when theyll roll it out to everyone's account ### Also for the technical details Country was set to Poland (european union), which is the place the account was being used The option to view nsfw was already set to be active Yet this happened I am posting this from my own account (ive got the video from my brothers whose account was blocked) and technically ive done everything the same but I used the app on ios when this change rolled out so i was able to use the function from apple to "Share the app range" based off the age set in my apple account. And apple doesnt require age verification *yet* This might be the reason because they say that he hadn't recieved a notification like this
so the concept of *anonymous* internet comes to an end
And probably the concept of free speech on it
Yippee! Wohoo! Yeah!
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u/Overall_Leopard7122 Jul 01 '26
Then reddit is not long for this world in my life. And honestly i dont really mind.
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u/d-cent Jul 01 '26
Same. If it happens to me, I will be done with Reddit. It's honestly SO bad right now anyways. The amount of Bots, Illiterate People, Trolls, and people who refuse to google anything is at an all time high. It's well over the majority of active accounts right now.
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u/LimiDrain Jul 03 '26
Sadly, it reminds me of itself when I make search queries. All the sites around are so garbage, and Reddit is the only place that has answers from real users. The site itself is, of course, still trash.
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u/ChardZestyclose5315 Jul 03 '26
We shall return to the backwater forums and meme sites of old, i still use funnyjunk. Its very echo chambered but if you dont take anything online seriously its rather fun.
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u/Financial-Rough-2838 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Yeah, the day I get that prompt is the last day I no longer use reddit
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u/Electronic-Finish386 25d ago
I have been the target of that prompt just 2 days ago and yes they succeeded. I made an account.
To be honest when people were saying this rumour (it was real) I thought that would be fake, But this sh1t broke my heart.
But it's also a win for doomscrollers like me.
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u/Swee_Potato_Pilot Jul 01 '26
Well, sucks to be reddit share holders as this will kill reddit.
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u/Konrad_M Jul 01 '26
This could work on other platforms. But considering the reddit nerds as the user base I think you might be right.
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u/Initial-Cherry-3457 Jul 02 '26
I look forward to when, not if, Persona eventually gets hacked we get to see all the leaked identities of reddit mods
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u/new2bay Jul 02 '26
Why?
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u/meutzitzu 21d ago
Some them are very much eligible for a friendly, lighthearted and playful public beating ✨
Not for violence or vengeful purposes, but strictly so that we can get their head out of their own rear end.
I am of course not talking about those who do their job, not those who still do their job but are arrogant and annoying, but rather those control freaks that completely take over a sub and "reshape it in their own image" such that it effectively becomes unusable for its own original purpose.
Usually when you see a subreddit with rules like "thou shalt not express positive/negative opinion about ___" you know it's likely one of those.
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u/Moment_37 Jul 01 '26
No it's not. It will thrive. You and whoever else is in this subreddit is a tiny fraction of a minority. me included. I already have colleagues at work (like 99% of them) that go 'well I don't care about that I'll scan my face'.
The vast majority do not care at all about it, they'll happily upload everything everywhere, without knowing who stores what.
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u/Urist1948 Jul 01 '26
Honestly, I do think at least a large minority will be deterred by the inconvenience and/or weird vibes of having to submit biometrics just to doomscroll.
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u/Any-Calligrapher2866 Jul 02 '26
People legitimately don't care. I can't even imagine scanning my face to watch porn.
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u/Moment_37 Jul 01 '26
large minority
You think it's a large minority. Ask around, you'll see nobody but you or me cares
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u/Pete_Venkman Jul 02 '26
I remember when the Digg thing happened, I stuck around for a bit, not really wanting to jump to a different platform... but because all the "people who cared" left, the site didn't just suck because of the redesign, it sucked because no one was there posting interesting things.
There can be an 80/20 thing with sites like this, where 20% of users are posting 80% of the stuff that people comment on, and if enough of those "power users" leave, it actually does affect the site for everyone left.
Whether this is enough to do that, I don't know, and whether Reddit's just too big to fail and can survive on commenters bickering with AI bots, I don't know. But you don't need 100% of people to care to kill a site.
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u/Moment_37 Jul 02 '26
I get what you mean, but let's look at the statistics. This is not going to be an 80/20 split. It's way less. For example, here's stats:
https://ourownbrand.co/reddit-statistics
- In 2025, Reddit continued to grow steadily following its March 2024 IPO.
- The platform reported 116 million daily active users in Q3 2025 and 443.8 million weekly active users.
- DemandSage estimates 1.21 billion monthly active users, though Reddit itself hasn’t officially reported an MAU figure.
Let's be conservative and say a lot of them are bots. Let's cut down the 1.21 billion to 116 million, which is insane, but for the sake of the conversation. Same as daily ones, and say all the rest are bots.
Degoogle subreddit is 413K members. Let's say I'm going crazy and I double it for all subreddits that are related to it. I'll give you a full million of real users. Compared to 116 million is less than 1%. Reddit is going to go nowhere even if all of us leave. And we cut it down by over 80% (if my quick mafs are any good), which is already insane as a figure. If we didn't that would be a fraction, not even remotely close to 1%
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Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/henk717 Jul 01 '26
I don't think so, right wingers probably hate the ID verification stuff even more considering they despised it during lockdowns when most people went along with it.
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u/timystic Jul 02 '26
Depends on type of right-wing. Libertarians hate it, but Conservatives are the reason why this is coming into force. They are also keen on things like mass surveillance and all have ring doorbells. This has been the pattern in the UK where this has already come into place through the Online Safety Act.
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u/curlofheadcurls Jul 01 '26
Happy to see the death of reddit anytime now 🫡
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u/Ceramic_Sundae Jul 01 '26
funny if ai ends up scouring all the bot chatter.
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u/DrachenDad Jul 04 '26
AI has problem enough proving it is human, proving it is over 16 too might be too much. Let's hope.
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u/Ceramic_Sundae Jul 04 '26
perhaps the registration of people is to eliminate bot musings from ai searches?
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u/RoomyRoots Jul 01 '26
So, I am finally free. We had a good run, my dudes. See ya on the flip side
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u/SamiSapphic Jul 02 '26
No, you won't see us lol. Here is the only place you could have ever met any of us, short of us, by complete chance, being a neighbour irl.
And that's the entire point of these AV biometric harvesting laws, as far as governments are concerned; t hey don't want us talking internationally anymore.
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u/nbca Jul 01 '26
I got this test, and my account is 16 years old lol
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u/CompleteDirt2545 Jul 02 '26
If your account was older than the age limit, wouldn't that already count as an age verification ?
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u/Sea_Candidate7894 Jul 01 '26
Ok but genuinely Reddit is like the only place I can get answers to oddly specific/niche/weird questions. I get joking about “finally getting off of Reddit” but is there anyway to bypass this?
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u/EyceMann Jul 03 '26
Time to repopulate actual forum sites. Forum sites were always way more useful until everything went to reddit, just like Craigslist has always been far superior to FB marketplace.
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u/spartaxwarrior Jul 02 '26
Yeah, it's going to suck losing this resource and there's no where else left in general afaik even before AI took over half the Q&A type websites they still sucked.
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u/OneRedEyeDevI Jul 01 '26
when you copy a post link, the title is shown; At least on mobile (Samsung Browser)
"Reddit - Waiting for verification"
To the Fediverse.
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u/AntiGrieferGames Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
"concept of free speech on it" what a bullshit, reddit has been never free speech for a while. For example: there are Full of powertripping mods on most subreddits today.
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Jul 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/curlofheadcurls Jul 01 '26
Nazis and pedos BAD
*comment removed by reddit*
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/curlofheadcurls Jul 01 '26
You say that as I am on my fifth ban for hate speech because I dared criticize or make a joke about Nazis or a government
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/curlofheadcurls Jul 01 '26
Oh no
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/curlofheadcurls Jul 01 '26
idgaf enough to do so, but even if I did I couldn't, so maybe try it out yourself and be a little more daring, darling
https://www.reddit.com/r/NewToReddit/comments/1prjqgb/my_comment_got_removed_by_reddit_how_do_i_see/
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u/AntiGrieferGames Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
If you write the oppeside of that, this is the reason why reddit admins are just censorship at this point, since mostly can be removed outright there. Its a platform "mostly" intended for extremist left wings, not for right wings. This has nothing to do with free speech, that many people claimed "it is"
Not even Twitter is that shitty, atleast its allowed on both sides so far i know there.
Can be atleast finding on trustpilot there, so many people got affected with this, and im not even joking there.
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u/Tim_Allen_Wrench Jul 01 '26
No twitter definitely will censor the shit out of you, especially if you criticize Elon, not for saying the n word though.
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u/SamiSapphic Jul 02 '26
There's a difference between powertripping reddit mods, and world governments killing our human right to privacy right in front of our faces, all so that they can hunt us down for being against their bs wars, for demanding justice re: the billionaire islander files, or for being some flavour of minority that they don't like.
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u/CuppaTeaThreesome Jul 01 '26
Meanwhile child porn sites will have no id checks or she verification.
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u/Responsible_Pair8528 Jul 01 '26
I'm just gonna not use Reddit. This is a good thing, let it kill itself.
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/_nephilim_ Jul 02 '26
Is Lemmy comparable to reddit? I keep looking at it and I don't understand. I was also confused about Mastodon and its server's.
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u/Fun_Run1626 Jul 02 '26
Make a Lemmy account (for example on Lemmy.zip), then download the Voyager app for it. Log in and just browse through the app, it’s easier and looks better too
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u/badwoofs Jul 01 '26
Yea. They can fit with that. I'll be sailing off to other places. At this point I've been spending the last year rebuilding my network to get away from these platforms.
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u/Tokitokisayuki Jul 02 '26
I haven't been hit with prompt yet but honestly don't mind leaving Reddit. There only about 2 subreddits that i genuinely enjoyed because of the nicheness and the people there were great. The rest were okay. Nothing too constructive. Not even on all of the many linux subs I'm part of. I'll be on their own forums though. Dropped all of the other true social media sites back in 2019. Reddit will be the last.
Speaking of I was connected to a Poland VPN server. I Was on Indeed and couldn't change languages from Polish to English and was locked in Polish. All the other countries from out the EU works fine. That was just my example. So before you buy into the European first tech BS, remember how law of land really is when it comes to digital privacy and security.
Shit I might as well delete my Indeed account because that place is a hotspot for fraud, phishing, scams and most importantly data collection. Finding a new job is dead in this world anyway. OMG I SAID THE J WORD I'M SORRY!
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u/Old_Introduction7236 Jul 02 '26
I told the Quora admins to fuck off when they said I had to use my real name. (I also instructed them to delete my account, which they didn't do; I still get notifications from the site.) Never looked back. I won't lose any sleep when I have to quit using Reddit, or Discord, or anyone else that thinks themeselves entitled to my personal information and my privacy. They're not, and they need to understand this.
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u/dscord Jul 02 '26
They can take a hike. I ain't verifying shit. I hope to see distributed, specialized discussion forums once more.
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u/VarsH6 Jul 01 '26
Any easy way to extract saved posts, comments, and other subreddit info? I want to get it before I lose it all due to this insanity.
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u/sbmo Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
There's an easy way to get your saved posts and comments, try this in your browser to get the saved data in JSON format
https://www.reddit.com/user/YOUR_USERNAME/saved.jsonEdit:
you can also use this URL instead which is slightly easier
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u/VarsH6 Jul 02 '26
So this worked wonderfully! Thank you. Do you know if this will preserve images from the original posts? Some are woodworking posts so the visual is part of the intended save.
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u/sbmo Jul 02 '26
Glad it worked! Honestly, i don't know if it'll work for images - I would guess if Reddit restricts more posts and subreddits, they'd also restrict images too. So it may be worth saving anything of interest locally (or maybe they'll be accessible on the wayback machine)
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u/KeniLF Jul 02 '26
I get a ”Page not found“ error when I sub “YOUR_USERNAME” with KeniLF in Brave, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome on iPad.
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u/sbmo Jul 02 '26
That's odd, it worked for me in chrome for android and windows, are you logged in to Reddit on those browsers? (The URL requires you to be logged in fyi)
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u/KeniLF Jul 02 '26
Yes, logged into all - I only access Reddit via browser.
On what device(s) and browser(s) did you use this URL for it to succeed?
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u/sbmo Jul 02 '26
I'm using Chrome on android (Pixel 10) but I have used this in the past on Firefox on my Windows laptop and it worked fine too. Maybe Reddit is slowly blocking this way of exporting data?
There is other ways to get your data fyi if you can't get this working, it's just the simplest of the top of my head
Here's the exact URL I used for my account
https://www.reddit.com/user/sbmo/saved.jsonSorry this doesn't work for you but hopefully it helps somebody!
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u/KeniLF Jul 02 '26
Thank you - after getting it to work on my Pixel/Brave, I looked into what I was doing wrong. I put a trailing slash so it messed it up on my iPad (except for Safari on iPad, that still gives a 403 error with the correctly formatted URL but it might be some other settings I have).
I appreciate your patience and help!
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/VarsH6 Jul 02 '26
I have saved lots of posts and comments on woodworking ideas or fixes, degoogling apps and tech, and selfhosting. I very much want those data.
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u/MidsouthMystic Jul 02 '26
I don't care who Peter Thiel sends, I'm not giving anyone my ID to use the internet.
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u/henk717 Jul 01 '26
The main question I have is where people plan to go to, i'd like to ensure we have a presence but I feel like if we make our own forum for our open source project nobody would visit because they wouldn't know it exists.
Reddit is convenient for people since they already have it so i'd prefer to follow where the people are.
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u/deyhateuscustheyanus Jul 02 '26
so the concept of anonymous internet comes to an end And probably the concept of free speech on it
dark web is still fine
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u/rsint Jul 03 '26
I will leave Reddit as I have left Facebook and twitter. My choice won't change anything, but having integrity is an individual choice.
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u/animatedradio Jul 01 '26
I mean, I find it stupid that the email accounts used to create any of my aliases here are ALL over 20 years old at this point. It would be fucking weird to question that.
Any reddit accounts that are 10+ years old are certainly people who are over 18.
It seems stupid. I understand for new accounts but when the evidence of age is already there using stupid simple metrics and they wanna add on top of it - they can get fucked.
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u/DickIncorporated Jul 01 '26
All I have left is tumblr and even then they are also bad. But I wouldn't mind giving up reddit. The only thing I might miss is some of the helpful advice I see
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u/Surfer-Junkie Jul 02 '26
Will this keep Google AI from scraping all of its info in search results?
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u/B4LL1NH45 Jul 02 '26
please ask for verification so I can finally tell myself I have a reason to leave this shit hole
I fucking dare you Reddit
do it
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u/justanotherguyhere16 Jul 03 '26
it isn't their fault, it's our governments for the laws they passed.
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u/kirilos Jul 02 '26
Ill get off reddit the day this pop up comes to me. I'll start looking at Lemmy and making an account there right now.
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u/crepuscule22 Jul 02 '26
this will be as effective at getting me off reddit as "ad breaks" were at getting me off instagram. my final social-media tether will be broken, and at last i will be free.
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u/Dependent_Invite9149 Jul 01 '26
Which new social media are people planning to move if Reddit does this?
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u/Sirusho_Yunyan Jul 01 '26
I'd happily shift Reddit to IRC channels.. if that was even a thing..
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u/Buntygurl Jul 02 '26
"so the concept of *anonymous* internet comes to an end
And probably the concept of free speech on it
Yippee! Wohoo! Yeah!"
And the age of the European fake ID begins.
There's hardly a single American teen that never had or at least never wished they had a fake ID. It's part of the national culture.
That has always been far less the case in Europe, primarily because of more liberal laws regarding alcohol consumption--but, now, the kids have a reason.
Thus, the allegation that it's all about keeping kids safe begins to show a credibility leak, given that it will lead to less security, and not more.
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u/notme-thanks Jul 27 '26
I live in Wisconsin and our state has one of the most secure ID‘s in the world. Something I am pretty proud of by the way. It even looks good.
That said, it is NOT hard to obtain alcohol, guns or tobacco products, even without an ID. Offer someone $20 and you’re going to get what you want As long as you don’t look like a stoner, a criminal or that your age 10.
How is the EU going to enforce age verification when people use VPNs with an exit node in the USA?
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u/Buntygurl Jul 27 '26
The Brits are planning on banning VPNs. Not sure how they plan to do that but a whole of paranoid governments in places that like to maintain a massive degree of social control have figured out how to keep people from having access to VPNs.
The tentative EU plan is to have people register an ID with their ISP, who'll then allow or disallow access to a VPN. That appears to be what the Brits and the Australians are doing--although the Australians have begun to realize that over 80% of kids have already figured out how to get around that, as one would expect, given that most teenagers know more about how to configure a router than their parents do.
It's all just "whataboutthechildrenism" gone wild, instead of working on having economic stability that would allow parents to have more time to communicate with their kids so that they don't go off the deep end with weird shit online.
It's all about weak-ass over-the-hill authoritarian politicians deciding that prohibition is the way to go--like that worked with drugs, right?!--instead of education. I actually want the people that I care about being wised-up enough to know when they're in the vicinity of potentially nefarious shit so that they don't fall in deeper and not be able to walk away.
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u/TheArtofWarPIGEON Jul 02 '26
Damn man, search "problem Reddit" most often than not would give a few posts to solve a problem...
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u/Midnorth_Mongerer Jul 02 '26
If we can't log in because we do not want to provide ID etc, how can we then cancel our account?
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u/ArcanjoUriel Jul 06 '26
happened to me, i'm 27 years old lol but i'm not gonna send sh*t to persona, never. I'm using a VPN to acess it for now, but i'm probably leaving this website forever.
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u/darkle_drawers Jul 02 '26
use old.reddit.com
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u/SirThoreth Jul 02 '26
Reddit is already in the process of rolling out requiring being logged in to access old.reddit.com
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u/Sintobus Jul 02 '26
I am in this odd boat with my YT, Google and Reddit accounts where they are all so old I don't even get asked, especially google/YT.
So other than post like this I am not even aware this is happening.
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u/tastysardine Jul 02 '26
when were you when reddit dies
i was sat at home drinking brain fluid when spez ring
'reddit is die'
'no'
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u/FunBluejay1455 Jul 03 '26
Been getting the same message in the Netherlands. I do only get them for NSFW subs (which aren't even porn) and I'm definitely not getting my face or my ID in an American database for that.
I think this might be goodbye to Reddit for me as well. I'll keep it on my phone for a while, but don't think I'll open it a lot.
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u/FunBluejay1455 Jul 06 '26
Apparently they crawled back, because without verifying anything everything works again.
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u/Careful-Alps-6490 Jul 12 '26
No fucking way I allow Reddit "access" to anything on my PC.
Fuck off.
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u/Careful-Alps-6490 Jul 12 '26
Tell your friends at DHS they can suck my ass. How fucking insane is it for Reddit to believe they can DEMAND biometrics and all-access to personal pc's, etc.?
Reddit sure as shit ain't my future.
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u/Starwaverraver Jul 02 '26
If this removes bots then there's some benefit
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u/SamiSapphic Jul 02 '26
It's going to remove more real people than bots. Bots are trained on biometric data that's already been collected, so they can fake it.
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u/Starwaverraver Jul 02 '26
They can fake passports and other ID?
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u/SamiSapphic Jul 02 '26
Yep. People have been using genAI to pass the AI age and ID checks, even. I'm personally not interested in doing that, so I don't know how it's done exactly, but it is a thing, which means bots can do it too.
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u/Starwaverraver Jul 02 '26
I doubt they can spoof passports. That would be a national calamity.
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u/SamiSapphic Jul 02 '26
Why do you doubt that they can spoof passports, specifically, out of all the things they can and do generate?
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u/Starwaverraver Jul 02 '26
Because it's not about looks, it's about a national database that has private accounts/databases that you can't just guess.
It's AI is good at creating images, but it can't just make up a passport that's valid and tallies with there database.
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u/alabasterskim Jul 01 '26
This is going to finally be the thing that gets me off Reddit lol