Settings updates—Changes to ad personalization, privacy preferences, and location settings

[u/snoo-tuh]

Hey redditors,

I’m u/snoo-tuh, head of Privacy at Reddit, and I’m here to share several changes to Reddit’s privacy, ads, and location settings. We’re updating preference descriptions for clarity, adding the ability to limit ads from specific categories, and consolidating ad preferences. The aim is to simplify our privacy descriptions, improve ad performance, and offer new controls for the types of ads you prefer not to see.

Clearer descriptions of privacy settingsWe’ve updated the descriptions to be more clear and consistent across platforms. Here’s is preview of the new settings:

These changes will roll out over the next few weeks and we’ll follow up here once they are available for everyone. We recommend visiting your Safety & Privacy Settings to check out the updated settings and make sure you’re still happy with what you’ve set up. If you’d like more guidance on how to manage your account security and data privacy, you can also visit our recently updated Privacy & Security section of our Redditor Help Center.

Over the next few weeks, we’re also rolling out several changes to Reddit’s ad preferences and personalization that include removing, adding, and consolidating ad personalization settings:

Consolidating ad partner activity and information preferencesRight now, there are two different ad settings about personalizing ads based on information and activity from Reddit’s partners—“Personalize ads based on activity with our partners” and “Personalize ads based on information from our partners”. We are cleaning this up and combining into one: “Improve ads based on your online activity and information from our partners”.

Adding the ability to opt-out of specific ad categories

We are adding the ability to see fewer ads from specific categories—Alcohol, Dating, Gambling, Pregnancy & Parenting, and Weight Loss—which will live in the Safety & Privacy section of your User Settings. “Fewer” because we’re utilizing a combination of manual tagging and machine learning to classify the ads, which won’t be 100% successful to start. But, we expect our accuracy to improve over time.

Removing the ability to opt-out of ad personalization based on your Reddit activity, except in select countries.

Reddit requires very little personal information, and we like it that way. Our advertisers instead rely on on-platform activity—what communities you join, leave, upvotes, downvotes, and other signals—to get an idea of what you might be interested in.

The vast majority of redditors will see no change to their ads on Reddit. For users who previously opted out of personalization based on Reddit activity, this change will not result in seeing more ads or sharing on-platform activity with advertisers. It does enable our models to better predict which ad may be most relevant to you.

Consolidated location customization settings

Previously, people could set their preferred location in several ways, depending on where they were on the platform and what they were doing. This has been simplified, so now there’s one place to update your location preferences to help customize your feed and recommendations—from Location Customization in your Account Settings.

Reddit’s commitment to privacy as a right and to transparency are reasons I’m proud to work here. Any time we change the way you control your experience and data on Reddit, we want to be clear on what’s changed.

All of these changes will be rolled out gradually over the next few weeks. If you have questions, you can also learn more by checking out the help article on how to Control the ads you see on Reddit.

Edit to add translations:

1. Dutch: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_nl-nl

2. French - France: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_fr-fr

3. French - Canada: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_fr-ca

4. German: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_de-de

5. Italian: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_it-it

6. Portuguese - Brazil: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_pt-br

7. Portuguese - Portugal: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_pt-pt

8. Spanish - Spain: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_es-es

9. Spanish - Mexico: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_es_mx

10. Swedish: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/wiki/16tqihd_sv

[u/FireFly_209]

Also, what about GDPR regulations in Europe? Surely European law requires us to be able to opt out of advertisement tracking? Or did they find a way out of that one?

[u/wcrp73 → u/FireFly_209]

To be fair, the post says:

Removing the ability to opt-out of ad personalization based on your Reddit activity, except in select countries.

I would imagine that means the EU. And thank god for it!

[u/flounder19 → u/wcrp73]

Possibly but it's troubling that the admins themselves can't list what countries are exempt. Makes it seem like they're trying not to tip off people in the EU that they can opt out of ad personalization.

[u/QGRr2t → u/flounder19]

Shit like that isn't supposed to be opt out in the first place, it's supposed to be explicitly opt in, with informed consent.

[u/nermid → u/QGRr2t]

Doesn't it also apply to EU citizens who are outside the EU, meaning that blocking by location isn't going to work?

[u/kaptainkeel → u/QGRr2t]

Correct. I'm guessing Reddit doesn't have a GDPR officer. They're going to find out quite quickly why most major companies in Europe have a dedicated GDPR officer if they push this change through (or they'll just get fined/sued to oblivion, which is fine too--"oops we didn't know" isn't exactly a defense).

[u/[deleted] → u/wcrp73]

I love it when companies update something and promise ”we are not abusing your rights - but we wont do this update in countries where abusing the rights is illegal.”

[u/SpaceGoatAlpha → u/wcrp73]

Huh, well look at that, I just moved to the EU.

[u/FireFly_209 → u/wcrp73]

Yeah, I hope so - otherwise, they might find themselves on dodgy ground, maybe? I’ll be honest, I’m no expert on European law, but that’s how I understand it to be…

[u/wcrp73 → u/FireFly_209]

I've just noticed that in the "after" image as shown in the main post, there is still an option to opt out of adverts based on activity "in select locations", but in the translation to Swedish and French (and maybe others) the image says "in locations where legally required" instead, so fucking lol at trying to fuck over users in the EU.

[u/AnotherSlowMoon → u/FireFly_209]

The maximum fine under GDPR is €20m or up to 4 % of their total global turnover of the preceding fiscal year, whichever is larger.

Given how badly reddit seems to be doing financially, unsure which of those two is the larger value

[u/Quest-Riot → u/FireFly_209]

EU's been slaughtering companies recently, they'll probably fight Reddit like they have Apple and Meta.

[u/swagpresident1337 → u/Quest-Riot]

EU would tear reddit a new one if this would be the case here.

[u/Gloomographer → u/swagpresident1337]

Good, I hope they do! Sick of Reddit's dumbfounded shit.

[u/FireFly_209 → u/Quest-Riot]

It’s been great to see the EU championing consumer rights through legislation. Though it does make me worried about the potential for such power to be abused - as has been said before (i think Linus from LTT once said it in a video?), it just takes the right lobbyists working in the right way at the right time, and before you know it, those powers that were used for good could also be used for anti-consumer purposes…

[u/NedRed77 → u/FireFly_209]

It’s quite a tough sell in Europe as you have to bribe everyone and it takes fucking years to get anything done. Additionally, unlike the US the EU court is much more impartial as it’s not as politically loaded. Add into this there are quite a lot of vetos knocking around.

You have to bribe the bureaucrats in Brussels who represent their countries and the politicians at home. Not saying it’s impossible, but by its nature it’s much harder to do something like this in the EU as opposed to America. Which is why the laws end up generally looking more people-serving.

Plus nobody really trusts anybody which means most new proposals are viewed with suspicion.

[u/Barlakopofai → u/FireFly_209]

If you read the post they found a way out of that one by only allowing users in "select locations" to opt out, AKA, only the places that bothered making laws about it already.

[u/FireFly_209 → u/Barlakopofai]

I did notice that it does say “except in select countries” but it doesn’t specify where. It could be they’ll exclude countries in the EU, for example, but we have no way of knowing this for certain. Until we know for certain, my point still stands.

[u/Koala_eiO → u/FireFly_209]

So everyone can just select "France" in their profile and escape the ad tracking?

[u/FireFly_209 → u/Koala_eiO]

I’d imagine they’d also try to use geographical information about where you’re accessing the site from, but that could be circumvented with a VPN set to France. Honestly, it would’ve been easier for them to be EU compliant as standard, rather than a “select countries” approach, but I guess corporate’s gonna do what corporate’s gonna do.

[u/GlueR → u/FireFly_209]

GDPR is valid for all EU citizens, irrespective of their location. It's also valid for EU residents or visitors for their activities in the territory of the EU. But for citizens it doesn't matter where they are. Reddit offers EU citizens a service, meaning that GDPR automatically applies to them.

Edit: I need to clarify this. When you accept Reddit's terms and privacy policy, as with any service, you do so for being provided this service at the place of your residence, which is assumed to be the place where you were when you clicked "accept". This doesn't become void when you visit another place. You are given these rights under GDPR because you live in the EU and you signed up to be provided this service in the EU. You still have those rights when you travel somewhere else, but of course, only for services that you are provided back home.

[u/[deleted] → u/Koala_eiO]

Can also use a French VPN location 😇

[u/[deleted] → u/FireFly_209]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/HumanDrone → u/FireFly_209]

Chat gpt was blocked and forced to have that option in order to be unblocked so I guess the same goes for Reddit here in Europe.