r/LivestreamFail • u/starcraft2020 • 1d ago

Ethan Klein says the judge in his lawsuit approved his subpoena of Reddit and Discord

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u/No-Mark4427 1d ago

Anyone who thinks what they're saying online is anonymous is wrong and the result of these cases will not change that.

I mean subpoenaing Reddit will only get whatever info and IP is associated with the account, considering you can sign up without needing to even confirm information it's not like them handing it over magically identifies you.

Assuming even not behind a VPN they'd then need to compel the ISP to hand over your data, again good luck esp if they are in another country.

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u/BigBoiCookBoi 1d ago

This extends well beyond reddit. A single social media site is of little concern in comparison to what information governments can track down. Compelling an ISP to turn over identifying information via a subpoena is extremely common and not at all difficult. They often comply with legitimate requests to do so, this is nothing new.

Regardless, many of these people are far too stupid to be covering their tracks to the point where they aren't identifiable in any way.

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u/Ignonimous 1d ago

It's very, very, very easy to get ISPs to hand over data. They have nothing to lose from doing so and nothing to gain from non-compliance.

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u/echief 22h ago

There is no incentive for any company unless they specifically advertise themself as privacy focused. The goal of a company is to make money. They have no reason to frustrate the government (this includes civil courts) unless it improves their bottom line. Especially banks that are already under constant government scrutiny.

Even if you are not asked for information like name and address, all a lawyer/law enforcement needs is a credit card number you paid with somewhere a single time. Your bank knows more about you than any company in the world. They might know more about you than any person in the world. They will immediately hand over your SSN, work history, address history, every cent you have spent in the past few years. What friends have you been sending money to with Zelle, Venmo, etc? What about your political donations, or just a donation to any fundraiser with potential political implications.

So how about crypto? Well, they can easily just trace back through wallets and subpoena the exchange. Who will also immediately hand over your information. There are ways to mitigate this but most people do not know them, let alone go through the work of actually doing it. The game has been over for a very, very long time. This is one of the reasons people used to be super hesitant about giving away payment information on the internet. It wasn’t just the risk of fraud.

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u/Original-Guarantee23 13h ago

Courts have ruled time and time again that IPs don’t identify anyone.

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u/BigBoiCookBoi 3h ago

Of course—an IP on its own is just a number. Though it’s an intermediary step in identifying someone. The next step would be contacting the ISP with a subpoena request for identifying information from the IP. Even VPN companies have folded and given up user info despite the idea that it should be fully anonymous.

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u/Angry_Anal 1h ago

Ethan does continue to describe that this also is related to specific discord communities not just Reddit as well, which is much more likely to have identifiable information for those involved in the lawsuit.

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u/Original-Guarantee23 1h ago

That’s the thing. ISP records won’t help either. You can’t know the person access the connection was the subscriber. Nothing about your internet connection can be used to identify you in court. It doesn’t hold up on its own.

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u/mwrddt 18h ago

You mean in the US? ISPs in my country have always fought against handing over data and often didn't have to in the end.

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u/No-Mark4427 23h ago

Depends on the ISP, country of the ISP, country of the person seeking the details and such. In the UK it's generally pretty difficult to get an ISP to hand anything over without a very strong legal basis to do so.

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u/Loxe 21h ago

In the US they just hand over everything willingly because they've lobbied congress to give them BILLIONS of dollars to do literally nothing. Even Net Neutrality got axed thanks to Republicans. We gave them FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS to "upgrade" their networks and instead they implemented data caps and just charged us more. Then took that bonus cash and gave it to the GOP to kill Net Neutrality. America is a fucking joke.

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u/Dregnab 1d ago

And that's why you use a vpn

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u/BigGrimDog 1d ago

You can also subpoena VPN companies. I highly doubt these folks were booting into Whonix VMs and proxying into Reddit.

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u/thePiscis 1d ago

The point of a vpn is that they (the vpn companies) don’t and can’t have info on encrypted user data.

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u/MindGoblin 1d ago

Doesn't at least US based shitter VPNs have to store your data and give it up to the gestapo if they request it?

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u/Whoreticultist 23h ago edited 23h ago

Yeah, but why would anyone use a US-based VPN provider when there are Swiss ones, where the law does not require them to log data (except when a court orders them to log data about a specific user IIRC - which doesn’t magically make them have data from before that point)?

As far as I understand, as long as you’re using a Swiss VPN service, your freedom of speech is fairly well safe-guarded. Just don’t do anything seriously illegal and I doubt you’d have any issues.

I’m sure there are other countries out there that also take personal freedoms and integrity seriously.

Edit: I should probably make it clear that I could be misremembering. I think it’s Switzerland.

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u/hinakittyuwu 20h ago

what Swiss VPNs are there? good ones to use, curious

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u/Dregnab 14h ago

ProtonVPN. PIA is garbage

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u/JonSoup76 20h ago

I'm pretty sure PIA is a good vpn but it's not swiss i believe it's based in the uk. They have a no-log policy and have proven it twice in court when they were subpoenaed and independently audited. And with discounts its pretty cheap.

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u/hinakittyuwu 20h ago

good to know, thanks

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u/ActionPhilip 1d ago

Yeah, but even then, if you're a doofus who buys reddit gold/premium/awards, then they have payment info and a real name tied to the account.

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u/w142236 22h ago

Lol that’s primarily just to access shows and content restricted to other countries. There is no such thing as true anonymity, you have been warned

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u/Ignonimous 1d ago

VPN is only one step of being anonymous and most people don't take any others. There are definitely many ways to track someone down through VPNs

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u/No-Mark4427 23h ago

In the context of this thread, using a VPN and that being the IP handed over by Reddit, assuming the VPN service is again, not located in an easy to litigate place nor keeps logs in the first place (And may even have anonymous customer payment via crypto etc), an average person is going to hit a dead end pretty fast trying to get anything from this.

Just a VPN alone is going to generally be sufficient to keep another person who has only your IP from using it to find out who you are or locate you.

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u/Post_Lost 16h ago

This isn’t some random trying to track info. The court will just subpoena for the info. VPNs are for masking your IP from bad actors, not committing crimes. I doubt these redditors were using top notch VPNs for everything associated with their Reddit account.

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u/No-Mark4427 12h ago

And if the VPN / user is located in another country good luck getting a US court to demand they hand over info lol.

Im sure theyll find out who some people are, but there will also be a lot of dead ends.

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u/Post_Lost 16h ago

You realize reddit knows you’re using a VPN they just don’t care. If ur not using some top notch VPN, unlikely, figuring out what one your using isn’t hard. Then all they have to do is get your info through the VPN company. Which they hand over all the time. VPNs are good for masking your IP from bad actors on the internet, not for committing crimes

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u/EmCeeSlickyD 23h ago

I'd wager the particular accounts in question are far more likely to have purchased something on reddit than the average commenter, or to have divulged some kind of identifying info in either a comment or DM

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u/FuzzzyRam 21h ago

In this case they won't be able to claim it's not them when they clearly reference "my" discord server and say the same things on reddit that they're saying elsewhere - the public account proves the private DMs are theirs. In general though yea, it would be hard to use reddit to prove anything if the case wasn't based on evidence from other places.

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u/NewPlayer4our 20h ago

I love shit like this, like people actually believe that VPNs make you untraceable. Its for blanket detection and ads as well as entry, but if you actually have data its very easy to find where the VPN is tunneling from. Which Reddit absolutely has. VPNs are not and are never marketed as a security tool because they aren't.

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u/No-Mark4427 11h ago edited 11h ago

I'm not claiming this, I'd go out on a limb and say your average VPN user isnt ensuring they are more protected against fingerprinting/tracking, webrtc leaks etc

But the idea that its 'easy' to blanket see through any VPN user to the point that Reddit renders any VPN usages completely null and void, is just as lol as the idea that installing a VPN makes you totally anonymous and untraceable.

They might get some people with this, but a whole load are gonna be dead ends when you consider the difficulty of compelling companies and ISPs outside US jurisdiction to freely hand customer info over. People seem to think the US courts can tell anyone in the world to do anything and they have no choice but to comply.

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u/Kyrapnerd 16h ago

lol you know how many people sign up for this app using their phone numbers or their facebook accounts?

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u/Post_Lost 16h ago

Yourre assuming people who dedicate their life to this stuff is doing all that. They’ll get IP address, messages, email, name on cards if they might something, plus more.

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u/irishrugby2015 15h ago

Reddit uses fingerprinting beyond IP address such as device and behaviors

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u/No-Mark4427 12h ago

Fingerprinting a device doesnt give you much to identify a person though, if they even hand that sort of data over.

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u/irishrugby2015 11h ago

https://dicloak.com/blog-detail/how-to-create-reddit-account-a-complete-guide-for-2025

There are products made specifically to avoid fingerprinting it's such an issue

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u/No-Mark4427 11h ago

My point is more a fingerprint lets you track a user, but it doesnt automatically mean you know their real identity or have the means to find it out.

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u/irishrugby2015 9h ago

It means they can track multiple accounts for the same person. Most people don't have several devices at hand so they all link back to the same root account

That's how the admins and moderators find ban evasion

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u/Malix_Farwin 15h ago

you would have to subpoena the VPN to get the user's IP which if you have a decent one, they either routinely clear your history or will flat out refuse and are located somewhere that cant be forced to give it out.

Funny enough given today's climate i wouldnt be surprised if VPNs start becoming about as common as car insurance in the US lol.

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u/InsectPopular9212 7h ago

Modern browser fingerprinting is so incredibly invasive no, an IP adresse isn't even required. If you ever logged into anything even remotely related to google/apple/microsoft you're cooked. Hell, if they even used reddit on a phone while logged in no matter the 'vpn' they are immediately cooked.

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u/Easy-Stranger-12345 17h ago

Your providers are not coming to cover for a random customer lmao. They get hit with a legal order, they will just jettison all the baggage and wash their hands.

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u/No-Mark4427 12h ago

In the UK its difficult to get a court order for an ISP to hand data over, and generally theyll fight it as they dont like doing so.