Reddit's CEO wants to “anonymously” verify human identity through FaceID
Reddit boss says the online forum platform is mulling face ID or touch ID to weed out bots – a move that isn’t likely to go down well with all users.
Steve Huffman told the Technology Business Programming Network (TBPN) podcast that, like many other platforms, Reddit was facing a massive bot problem and was looking at various technologies to combat this.
The CEO of Reddit – the online community-driven discussion forum that famously promises to prioritize user anonymity – said his preference would be for something “lightweight.”
“Something like faceID or touch ID – which is in a family of technology called Passkeys… because they require a human presence,” Huffman said.
“A human has to touch or do or look at something. That proves there’s a person there. I think that’s very accepted,” he added.
Besides these passkey methods, which use biometric data, Huffman mentioned other options, including decentralized third-party information providers and those that don't require a user ID.
While Reddit hasn’t decided how to verify its users' humanness on the platform yet, Huffman stressed that it still wanted to prioritize anonymity.
“Reddit's thing is: We want to know this person, but not which person this is. Part of our promise for users is that we don’t know your name. But we do want to know whether you're a person. So it will be an evolution for a while. For every platform really. To find the middle ground here.”
Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO
Battling the bots
Since modern AI bots can accurately interpret distorted text and complex images, often breaking traditional CAPTCHAs, the pressure is now on for Reddit to find new ways of weeding out bots.
The rollout of new “prove you’re human” checks at Reddit has been mooted following a controversial project by security researchers at the University of Zurich who secretly deployed AI-powered bots to influence debates on a subreddit thread last May.
The research involved infiltrating the subreddit, r/changemyview, which was hit with AI bots pretending to be a rape victim, a Black man who was opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement, and someone who worked at a domestic violence shelter.
Check if your data has been leaked
While Huffman did not mention age-verification compliance on the podcast, the CEO must also be pondering this issue after the firm was slapped with a £14.5m fine last month from the Information Commissioner’s Office.
The UK’s data watchdog found that the platform relied on easily bypassed age checks and unlawfully processed children’s data.
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However, the worry is that policing AI bots could deter casual user participation and ruin the spontaneous atmosphere of Reddit threads that is part of the forum's brand.
Reddit co-founder and former executive chair, Alexis Ohanian, said on X that Reddit requiring Face ID wasn't something he expected, but agreed that something had to be done about the fake, bot-generated content.
However, analysts at the International Cyber Digest dismissed the idea as “Delusional.”
It added: “Someone needs to tell Reddit's CEO what anonymity means. And that passkeys authenticated through Face ID and Touch ID don't prove you're human.”
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