Last week, editors around the world were gripped by scandal when they learned that a team of researchers had released a swarm of AI-powered bots that mimicked humans on the subreddit “Change My Mind.” The large-scale experiment was designed to explore how persuasive AI can be.
The bots posted more than 1,700 comments, taking on the personas of victims of violence or contradictory identities, such as a supporter of the Lives Matter campaign.
For Reddit, this incident was a mini-nightmare. The Reddit brand is associated with authenticity – a place where real people share real opinions. If this human-centered ecosystem is disrupted by artificial intelligence waste or becomes a place where people can’t trust that they’re getting information from real people, it could not only threaten Reddit’s core identity. Reddit’s profits could also be at risk, as the company currently sells its OpenAI content for education.
The company condemned the “improper and highly unethical experiment” and filed a complaint against the university that conducted it. But this experiment was only one of many instances in which generative AI bots would pose as humans on Reddit for reasons ranging from scientific to politically manipulative.
To protect users from bot manipulation and “keep Reddit human,” the company has quietly signaled an upcoming action that may be unpopular with users who come to Reddit for another reason: anonymity.
On Monday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced in a post that Reddit will start working with “various third-party services” to verify the humanity of users. This is a significant step for a platform that has historically required little to no personal information from users to create an account.
“To keep Reddit human and compliant with new regulatory requirements, we’re going to need a little more information,” Huffman wrote. “Specifically, we need to know if you are human, and in some places, if you are an adult. But we never want to know your name or who you are.”
(Social networks have already begun implementing identity verification after at least nine states and the United Kingdom passed laws requiring 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 the verification process, but confirmed that Reddit is already taking steps to ban “bad” bots. The spokesperson also did not share details about which third-party services the company will use and what kind of personally identifiable information users will have to provide.
Many companies today rely on verification platforms such as Persona, Alloy, Stripe Identity, Plaid, and Footprint, which typically require a government-issued ID to prove age and human identity. There are also newer and more speculative technologies, such as Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity and his eye-scanning device that is “proof you’re human.”
Opponents of identity verification say that sharing your personal information with social networks threatens privacy and data security. This is especially true on platforms like Reddit, where people come to share experiences that they might never have done if their names were associated with them.
It’s not hard to imagine a world in which authorities could subpoena Reddit to identify, for example, a pregnant teenager asking about the experiences of abortion of women in states where it is currently banned. See how Meta turned over private conversations between a Nebraska woman and her 17-year-old daughter discussing the latter’s plans to terminate her pregnancy. Thanks to Meta’s help, law enforcement obtained a search warrant that led to felony charges against the mother and daughter.
This is exactly the kind of risk Reddit hopes to avoid by turning to outside firms to provide “the information we need and nothing more,” according to Huffman, who emphasized that “we never want to know your name or who you are.”
“Anonymity is important to Reddit,” he said.
The CEO also noted that Reddit will continue to “protect your personal information to the utmost” and “continue to resist excessive or unreasonable demands from public or private authorities.”
