(Bloomberg) -- Reddit Inc., the news aggregator and discussion forum website, doesn’t always know the full names, genders or other identifying information about its users. That might not be the most lucrative way to build an advertising business, but Chief Executive Officer Steve Huffman feels vindicated.

Larger technology peers, including Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, are facing regulation and government scrutiny over how they use, and profit from, the personal data of billions of people. Reddit, meanwhile, is serving up ads alongside its popular user forums, which are segmented by interest and run the gamut from beauty tips to politics.

Reddit “exists because we didn’t build a business that’s predicated on harvesting and selling your personal data,” Huffman said at Bloomberg’s Sooner Than You Think conference in New York.

The only downside? Reddit still has “a long way to go” before it can withstand the pressures of public markets, Huffman said.

Huffman has hinted previously that Reddit could be spun out from its parent company, Advance Publications Inc., within a couple of years. But now, “we look at our peers and we look at what’s going on with the market -- I want to make sure if we do something like that, that we can continue to maintain the courage of our convictions,” Huffman said.

An initial public offering is “probably 35 years out,” he joked.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Frier in San Francisco at sfrier1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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