Reddit considers World for proof of personhood, age verification: Report 

Reddit is reportedly in talks with Tools of Humanity to use the World ID biometric-based digital identity for proof of personhood and age verification of users accessing the social media platform. A major AI bot infestation prompted CEO Steve Huffman to announce plans to contract third-party services for proof of humanity in May.

“To keep Reddit human and to meet evolving regulatory requirements, we are going to need a little more information,” Huffman said. “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. The way we will do this is by working with various third-party services that can provide us with the essential information and nothing else.” 

As one of the site’s third-party verification providers, World ID would allow Reddit users to prove that they are unique humans while remaining anonymous, Semafor reports, citing two people familiar with the talks. 

News of conversations between the two firms is not unexpected. World Co-founder Sam Altman and entities controlled by him owned an 8.7 percent stake in Reddit as of its IPO, more than its co-founder and Reddit CEO Huffman, who owned a 3.3 percent stake. Altman was also a member of Reddit’s board for seven years, until 2022. The companies he owns or manages have invested over $60 million in Reddit since 2014, according to Quartz.

World ID also has a clear use case for Reddit. The platform has recently been facing the threat of bots performing actions like posting, commenting, or upvoting content. In April, for instance, a group of researchers from the University of Zurich conducted a secret experiment on the platform to see how bots can be used to influence human opinions.

Originally launched in 2005, the social media firm has 108.1 million daily active users (DAU) engaging with its platform. More than half of them (56 percent) of those users are based in the U.S. or the UK, two markets where World recently began signing up users.

To create a digital ID with World, users are required to submit iris scans through the company’s biometric device, the Orb, which encrypts them into a numerical code and deletes the original image. Several countries have shut down Orb verifications, however, including Indonesia, Kenya, Spain, Germany and Brazil. The system allows users to prove they are real humans without disclosing their identity.

Article Topics

age verification  |  digital ID  |  iris biometrics  |  Reddit  |  social media  |  Tools for Humanity  |  World  |  World ID  |  World ID Orb