[volkl48]

You can make a new user account on Reddit in 30 seconds and don't even need an email (last I checked).

Pretty easy to maintain a significant degree of anonymity by just deleting your account and making a new one.

With that said, most users are more concerned about being anonymous to their peers in conversation than they are to Reddit's administration itself, IMO.

[cuddlypsycho]

I'm not talking about email, IP address or any other convenient mode of identification.

Think voting patterns, date/times active, submission categories, comments, writing style, punctuation ...

Facebook had a project to cross-reference user behavior to anonymized medical data. Say patient A's history says he visited a foreign country in the Mediterranean, came back with the stomach flu, was hospitalized for 3 days ... Maps to: holiday photos, dates, locations, status updates, friends commenting get well soon etc.

I hear they were pretty successful at it too! Makes you think what a government actor can do with enough data.

[sp527]

I think he's right. There are so many features you can use to profile and de-anonymize a user, even if you're not running the servers.

People generally don't seem to appreciate the relationship between marginal information and statistical likelihood. ~87% of Americans are identified by DoB, zip code, and gender. That was about two decades ago. The state of the art today is going to make Cambridge Analytica look like the Post Office when it gets pulled out of the shadows.

[relic]

You do need an email to sign up, although since they allow a user to be 'logged in' as more than one user at a time, they may allow more than one account per email address. And they don't do email confirmation, though. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.

[txcwpalpha]

>You do need an email to sign up

No you don't. You can leave the email box blank and sign up with no problems.

[Macha]

Not anymore.

[kevingrahl]

This is not true!

Just to be sure I just tried it via iOS Safari and signed up for a new account by entering a username and a password. Left the email field blank. Works like a charm.

[bruhbruhbruh]

You're incorrect. You can leave the email field blank.

[beedogs]

I've got about a hundred accounts and none of them were created with an email address.

[GSimon]

Now they ask for e-mail before you can sign up, but you don t have to go to your inbox to activate you accounts so basically it's the same.

[function_seven]

It's a dark pattern. They pop up a dialog with just an email field and a [Next] button. Makes you think you have to enter something before you proceed. But you can leave it blank and move to the username/password stage.

[anchpop]

Why is that a dark pattern? Seems the same as almost every other site, except with the relaxation of the requirement for an email

[function_seven]

Notice all the sibling comments that insist the email is required now? It’s an understandable misread of that sign up flow. Only one field and then a Next button.

Almost no other input flow allows you to hit “next” when the only form field hasn’t been addressed yet. Why not put username, password, and email on one page instead of splitting it up the way they do? Then you can mark the two fields as required and the third as optional.

[txcwpalpha]

You can leave the email box blank and still sign up with only username and password with no problem.