Reddit, like virtually each different social media platform, has been struggling as of late with a deluge of bots and AI-generated content material. In a research from final yr, roughly 15% of posts on the platform had been discovered to be AI-generated.
Now, it might quickly begin experimenting with asking customers for biometric information like Face ID or Contact ID, or different types of passkey know-how, to stem the tide of bots. In an interview with the TBPN podcast, first noticed by Engadget, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stated this tech is essentially the most “light-weight approach” to make sure all customers had been human. Huffman indicated the platform might use decentralized third-party info suppliers to confirm customers’ private particulars.
“A part of the promise to customers is we don’t wish to know your title,” he advised the hosts. “However we wish to know that you are a particular person.”
In 2026, bots are an existential danger to on-line platforms. Content material aggregator Digg, which was in beta forward of its comeback, was just lately compelled to pause operations and lay off employees in response to the horde of bots on its platform.
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In the meantime, the power of bots to affect the discourse on Reddit has already been demonstrated. In April 2025, researchers from the College of Zurich secretly deployed AI-powered bots that to affect debate in a subreddit referred to as r/changemyview, with bots pretending to be a ‘rape sufferer,’ a ‘Black man’ who was against the Black Lives Matter motion, and somebody who ‘work[s] at a home violence shelter.’
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Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian stated his web site utilizing Face ID was not one thing that he had on his “bingo card,” however argued that “one thing has bought to be completed about all of the pretend/botted content material” in a latest put up on X. Nonetheless, the founder added the caveat that he doesn’t “know promote face-scanning to redditors and even lurkers.” Many Reddit customers have already expressed grievances with the transfer, with one person saying: “Inform me you wish to kill Reddit with out telling me.”
Reddit wouldn’t be the primary nameless platform to start out requesting customers present biometric information to show who they’re. For instance, Discord earlier this yr began to demand that some customers present face scans so its AI software may decide in the event that they had been over 18, as a part of efforts to maintain minors off the platform.
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