On February 24, 2026, the U.K. Information Commission’s Office (“ICO”) announced that Reddit, Inc. was fined £14.47 million ($19.6 million) after investigators determined that the company used the personal information of children unlawfully. The ICO also reported that there were a large number of children under 13 on the platform despite Reddit’s terms of service prohibiting use of the platform by children under 13. According to the ICO, its investigators also found that Reddit did not have measures in place to check the age of users accessing its platform until July 2025. Reddit also allegedly failed to implement an age assurance mechanism capable of protecting the personal information of children under the age of 13 and failed to conduct a data protection impact assessment (“DPIA”) to assess and mitigate the risks to children before January 2025, even though children between the ages of 13 and 18 were allowed to use the platform. The ICO concluded that Reddit’s failures potentially exposed children under the age of 13 to inappropriate and harmful content, and the amount of the penalty reflects “the number of children affected by the infringement, the degree of potential harm caused, the duration of the failings, and Reddit’s global turnover.”
In response to the fine, U.K. Information Commissioner John Edwards stated that he was concerned that a company as large as Reddit would fail in its legal duty to protect the personal information of children in the United Kingdom. He also encouraged companies not to rely on systems that allow users to declare their age themselves and emphasized that his office would be focusing on companies that primarily use this method to protect children.