As with many other subreddits, /r/LegalAdviceUK (which had been dark since the start of the blackout) has been sent a thinly-veiled threat by Reddit.
So they’ve reopened in order to start moving the entire community of 810,000 subscribers to somewhere else.
As you can imagine there are a number of legal professionals who moderate that sub, and they really don’t take kindly to being threatened. They sign off their reopening message with “Fuck /u/Spez and long live John Oliver.” but for the real fun you might want to look up a very famous British legal case they reference, Arkell v Pressdram 1971.
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. The last thing u/spez wants is a bunch of angry attorneys who want to fuck him over. If uklegaladvice makes a move legaladvice will too. If I were u/spez I’d be checking the strings on that golden parachute.
No-one is suing reddit for any of this. Reddit is a private business that can charge what it likes for it’s API, can shut down 3P apps usage without warning etc.
The only power we have is leaving the platform.
You’re right on that part, but how they’ve handled people’s data and deletion/restoring is questionable, especially from a European standing.
If that was the only thing Reddit was doing in the midst of this shitstorm, maybe. But they’ve also been slinging threats and accusations around. There are laws against some of those things too, Reddit maybe should try treading a bit more carefully if for example they want to accuse someone publicly of “blackmailing” them.
There is that aspect concerning spez’s defamatory public remarks against the Apollo dev. I’m sure they can work that angle if Christian was inclined to do so. But I also don’t think he will, unless Steve unwisely makes another non-PR/lawyer cleared statement.
They are doing some questionable things regarding gdpr and the right to be forgotten.