Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a Reddit post today that Reddit will require accounts that exhibit “automated or otherwise fishy behavior” to verify that they are run by a human. The verification process is intended to combat unwanted bots coming to Reddit at a time when AI bots are poised to take over the Internet.
“As AI becomes a bigger part of the Internet, we want to make sure that when you’re on Reddit, you know when you’re talking to a person and when you’re not,” Huffman said.
Human verification will only occur if Reddit suspects an account is a bot. This is “rare” and won’t apply to “most users,” Huffman stressed. If the account could not prove it was human, it “could be banned”, he said.
While Reddit will check if an account is run by a human using third-party tools, Huffman said it will not expose users’ real identities, Reddit usernames or Reddit activity. Current methods Reddit is exploring include passkeys, which Huffman said are a great starting point, but that don’t provide “proof of personality or anything other than ‘a human probably did something’.”
Reddit is also considering third-party biometric services like World ID, which uses iris-scanning technology.
“I think the Internet needs these kinds of verification solutions, where your account information, usage data and identity are never mixed up,” Huffman said.
A last resort might be third-party government ID services, which Reddit is already required to use in certain geographic regions, such as the UK. Huffman said this is the “least secure, least private, and least preferred” method for human verification on Reddit.
“When we are forced to do so, we design the integration so that we never actually see your ID information, so that your Reddit data cannot be linked to you,” he said.
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