![\"Reddit](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/11b9c6c65c7599adebf974958b311e99.jpeg\")
Reddit said it plans to appeal the decision (Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV) \u00b7 Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV\/AFP\/AFP <\/p>\n Reddit said it plans to appeal the decision (Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV) \u00b7 Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV\/AFP\/AFP <\/p>\n
Britain’s data watchdog on Tuesday said it has fined online discussion site Reddit \u00a314.5 million ($19.5 million) over failures to protect children’s personal data, potentially exposing them to harmful content.<\/p>\n
The Information Commissioner’s Office said the US-based company failed to check children’s ages properly and did not complete a required risk assessment for children before January 2025.<\/p>\n
“These failures meant Reddit was using children\u2019s data unlawfully, potentially exposing them to inappropriate and harmful content,” the ICO said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Reddit said it plans to appeal the decision.<\/p>\n
The watchdog launched an investigation into Reddit in March 2025 over its age assurance measures and personal information use.<\/p>\n
Social media platform Tiktok and image-hosting website Imgur were also targeted by the data protection regulator’s investigation, prompting Imgur in September to block access for viewers in the UK.<\/p>\n
The ICO found that while Reddit prohibits children under 13 from using its platform, it did not have any measures in place to check users’ ages until July 2025.<\/p>\n
“Children under 13 had their personal information collected and used in ways they could not understand, consent to or control,” John Edwards, the UK information commissioner, said in a statement on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The watchdog said it will keep Reddit’s age assurance measures under review as part of its broader policy of monitoring companies that rely on users to self-declare their age.<\/p>\n
A Reddit spokesperson said the company “doesn’t require\u00a0users to share information about their identities, regardless of age, because we are deeply committed to their privacy and safety”.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is ramping up efforts to protect children online, having launched a consultation on a social media ban for those under the age of 16.<\/p>\n
The government has also moved to tighten its online safety laws following an outcry over sexualised deepfakes created by Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok.<\/p>\n
ajb\/bcp\/gv<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reddit said it plans to appeal the decision (Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV) \u00b7 Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV\/AFP\/AFP Britain’s data watchdog on Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,6511,393,4884,228930,228929,1144,10054,2511,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":["post-785879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-britain","tag-data-protection","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-harmful-content","tag-john-edwards","tag-northern-ireland","tag-personal-data","tag-reddit","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116125811693258488","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}