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cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36063172
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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That's probably a massive GDPR violation. Automated processing of extra sensitive data like political beliefs and religion is not outright forbidden but it's subject to extra protections.
Have there been any enforcement actions against big companies yet?
Meta got a fine of over a billion euros. Google got a bunch of smaller fines, but it's probably way above everyone else in terms of fines. Microsoft got half a billion. Even Apple got an 8 million euro fine, but that was more a tap in the wrist to make them think twice about some data collection.
And besides this, large companies are constantly in contact with the authorities and in smaller violations the general policy is to give a warning and let companies stop the illegal data processing voluntarily.
I’m so jealous.
Sadly you consented to all of it
GDPR article 9 (1) says you can't play algorithmic guess with people's religion or political opinions unless you gave express permission to the service provider to do it (i.e. it's not covered in the general GDPR boilerplate)
Hard agree with this. Does Reddit even have lawyers, or are they just using ChatGPT? Google, Meta, and Tik Tok already paid PII misuse fines for less than this. everything listed is part of the GDPR extended PII list.
Unrelated question: How do I short reddit stock?
GDPR prevents using underhanded tactics to assume consent for this type of use.
Nah, I think all of it is literally just public data offered up by users themselves. If you didn't want those opinions shared, you shouldn't have posted them on Reddit.
GDPR also applies to data you get from public sources.
I don't understand.
If someone writes a reddit post and says "I'm fasting for Ramadan," can I not infer from that public post that the user is probably Muslim?
You cannot use an algorithm to correlate it with other data without express consent.
They will get your data from everywhere not just reddit. There needs to be many more laws and punishments for doing this.
I doubt it, since all it ostensibly does is summarize info the user has released freely. How that info is stored and retained exactly might be up for debate though.
The title is likely inaccurate. The post only contains a summary of the user's posting history. It makes no statements regarding the user's beliefs.
Yeah this seems illegal as fuck