Any pointers on how to report them?
As requested, I’m posting the full text of the email into this post body. I hope it’s screen reader friendly:
u/USERNAME,
tl;dr – you’re invited to a special program that lets redditors purchase stock at the same price as institutional investors when we IPO. Details about eligibility and next steps follow. This (long, dense) email has all the info we can provide due to legal restrictions.
As you may have heard, Reddit has taken steps toward becoming a publicly traded company with the initial public filing of our registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 22, 2024. Yes, it’s happening.
And because you have helped make Reddit what it is today, you now have the opportunity to become Reddit owners at the same price as institutional investors.
We’re offering a Directed Share Program (“DSP”) that invites eligible users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to participate in our initial public offering (“IPO”). (Including you!) Program Requirements While being selected to pre-register is the first step, there are certain legal and regulatory requirements to participate in the DSP that are outside of Reddit’s control. Bear with us here…
To be eligible for the DSP, you must: • Be a current U.S. resident; o You will be asked to provide the DSP Administrator a valid social security or permanent resident number, along with other personal information. Reddit will not have access to this data. o Please note that U.S. residents using a VPN may face application limitations if the VPN locates them in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions. • Be at least 18 years old; • Provide your full legal name and an email address; • Not be a current or former Reddit employee (FTE). When the DSP launches (a few weeks after pre-registration ends), individuals who have been confirmed for the program will be contacted by our external DSP Administrator. You will then be asked to provide additional information securely to the DSP Administrator to confirm your eligibility. How to pre-register The number of people who can participate in the DSP is limited; we will offer this opportunity to as many redditors as we are able to accommodate. If capacity is reached before the deadline, you will be added to the waitlist. Based on demand, we may also limit the number of shares available.
If you are interested in being part of Reddit’s DSP, please go to https://reddit.com/dsp on desktop to complete the pre-registration form. If you are one of the confirmed participants, we will follow up with an email with more details in the coming weeks. You can also refer to the Frequently Asked Questions for more information. Due to regulatory restrictions (yeah… we know…) we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions.
Pre-registering does not guarantee that you will be invited or able to participate in the DSP; it also does not obligate you to purchase shares.
As with any investment opportunity, you should make an individual decision based on your own personal circumstances and risk tolerance. Therefore, we urge you to review the preliminary prospectus, when available, before deciding whether to invest in Reddit.
The deadline for pre-registering for the DSP is March 5, 2024. If capacity is reached before the deadline, you will be added to the waitlist. What happens next? While there won’t be a confirmation email immediately after you pre-register, everyone who pre-registers will receive an email in the coming weeks from “noreply@redditmail.com”, telling them whether they can proceed with the next steps for the DSP.
This is an automated message (beep, boop, beep) and does not receive replies. Please refer to the FAQ for more information. Per our lawyercats, we are not able to respond to further inquiries or questions. Prospectus and Important Disclosures The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. When available, a copy of the preliminary prospectus related to the offering may be obtained from: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, New York, New York 10014, or email: prospectus@morganstanley.com; Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, New York 10282, telephone: 1-866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316, or email: prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com; J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Attention:c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, telephone: 1-866-803-9204, or email: prospectus-eq_fi@jpmorgan.com; and BofA Securities, Inc., NC1-022-02-25, 201 North Tryon Street, Charlotte, North Carolina 28255-0001, Attention: Prospectus Department, telephone: 1-800-294-1322, or email: dg.prospectus_requests@bofa.com.
A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This notification shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the registration statement has become effective, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time prior to the notice of its acceptance given after the effective date. An indication of interest in response to this notification will involve no obligation or commitment of any kind.
You are receiving this email because a Reddit account, USERNAME, is registered to this email address. 548 Market St., #16093, San Francisco, CA 94104–5401
Which is a GDPR violation and should be treated as such when they get caught
And what jurisdiction does the gdpr have over servers hosted in America?
We’re all still waiting for the court case that sets this precedent.
*According to Article 3(2), a business that targets individuals in the EU for offering goods or services (even if it’s free) or monitoring their behaviour falls under the scope of GDPR. Monitoring activities such as tracking through cookies or other technologies, behavioural advertising, geolocation, market surveys etc performed by a non-EU business can be subject to GDPR. A US business that has no establishment in the EU, but sells goods or services to consumers in the EU, will fall under the scope of GDPR in the US. Note that the law extends to any resident of the EU, irrespective of citizenship. *
Source: https://www.cookieyes.com/blog/gdpr-in-the-us-a-checklist-for-compliance/
Many US companies were fined, it doesn’t matter where your servers are, it matters if you target EU customers. In this case, Reddit very clearly targeted EU citizens.
Can you cite a case where an American company with no holdings or dealings in the EU was fined successfully?
If the company has no infrastructure within the jurisdiction of the gdpr, how can they hope to enforce it?
IANAL and this obviously won’t happen (because it’s one of if not the stupidest way to go about it right from the get go) but still:
They can literally demand any and all European ISPs block all their traffic, they can still raise the fees and if they don’t pay accrue interest/late claims on it. Will this change anything? Not immediately, but the moment that company does anything the courts can reach they are in a whole lot of trouble.
Anyway besides this are there really companies that are so US centric that a European court can’t (like really absolutely can’t) reach them?
Reddit has holdings in Dublin, Ireland, where they have a large contingent of employees. thus they are required to adhere to GDPR.
Reddit has employees and servers in Europe, including EU countries. GDPR most definitely applies.