Redditors around the world were scandalized last week after learning that a team of researchers released a swarm of AI-powered, human-impersonating bots on the “Change My View” subreddit. The large-scale experiment was designed to explore just how persuasive AI can be.
The bots posted over 1,700 comments, adopting personas like abuse survivors or controversial identities like an anti-Black Lives Matter advocate.
For Reddit, the incident was a mini-nightmare. Reddit’s brand is associated with authenticity — a place where real people come to share real opinions. If that human-focused ecosystem is disturbed with AI slop or becomes a place where people can’t trust that they’re getting information from actual humans, it could do more than threaten Reddit’s core identity. Reddit’s bottom line could be at stake, since the company now sells its content to OpenAI for training.
The company condemned the “improper and highly unethical experiment” and filed a complaint with the university that ran it. But that experiment was only one of what will likely be many instances of generative AI bots pretending to be humans on Reddit for a variety of reasons, from the scientific to the politically manipulative.
To protect users from bot manipulation and “keep Reddit human,” the company has quietly signaled an upcoming action — one that may be unpopular with users who come to Reddit for another reason: anonymity.
On Monday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman shared in a post that Reddit would start working with “various third-party services” to verify a user’s humanity. This represents a significant step for a platform that has historically required almost no personal information for users to create an account.
“To keep Reddit human and to meet evolving regulatory requirements, we are going to need a little more information,” Huffman wrote. “Specifically, we will need to know whether you are a human, and in some locations, if you are an adult. But we never want to know your name or who you are.”
Techcrunch event
Berkeley, CA
|
June 5
BOOK NOW
(Social media companies have already started implementing ID checks after at least nine states and the U.K. and passed laws mandating age verification to protect children on their platforms.)
A Reddit spokesperson declined to explain under what circumstances the company would require users to go through a verification process, though they did confirm that Reddit already takes measures to ban “bad” bots. The spokesperson also wouldn’t share more details about which third-party services the company would use or what kind of personally identifying information users would have to offer up.
Many companies today rely on verification platforms like Persona, Alloy, Stripe Identity, Plaid, and Footprint, which usually require a government-issued ID to verify age and humanity. Then there’s the newer and more speculative tech, like Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity and its eye-scanning “proof of human” device.
Opponents to ID checks say there are data privacy and security risks to sharing your personal information with social media platforms. That’s especially true for a platform like Reddit, where people come to post experiences they maybe never would have if their names were attached to them.
It’s not difficult to imagine a world in which authorities might subpoena Reddit for the identity of, for example, a pregnant teen asking about abortion experiences on r/women in states where it is now illegal. Just look how Meta handed over private conversations between a Nebraska woman and her 17-year-old daughter, which discussed the latter’s plans to terminate a pregnancy. Meta’s assistance led law enforcement to acquire a search warrant, which resulted in felony charges for both the mother and daughter.
That’s exactly the risk Reddit hopes to avoid by tapping outside firms to provide “the essential information and nothing else,” per Huffman, who emphasized that “we never want to know your name or who you are.”
“Anonymity is essential to Reddit,” he said.
The CEO also noted that Reddit would continue to be “extremely protective of your personal information” and “will continue to push back against excessive or unreasonable demands from public or private authorities.”
