Reddit adds labeling for non-human accounts, weighs personhood verification methods

Reddit is for people. So says the popular messaging platform, which has introduced a new labeling system for automated accounts, in an attempt to sort the humans from the bots.

“Our product has always been human conversation: messy, opinionated, sometimes great, sometimes not, but always real (or at least, really creative writing),” says a post announcing the change. “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.”

The main change is that accounts using automation in allowed ways (so-called “good bots”) will have the label “[App]” applied to them. The label will apply to apps built on Reddit’s Developer Platform as well as “other non-violating automated accounts.” Nefarious bots and spam will continue to be purged, per existing policy. And reporting them will be easier.

Suspicious behavior by a user that indicates they might not be human (for instance, the speed at which they post), will prompt verification. Anticipating the tizzy that word might set off, Reddit is careful to note that “this will be rare and will not apply to most users. To be clear, this is not sitewide human verification, let alone sitewide ID verification.”

“If we need to verify an account is human, we’ll do it in a privacy-first way. Our aim is to confirm there is a person behind the account, not who that person is.”

Passkeys ‘a great starting point’

For privacy-preserving verification options, Reddit will look to passkeys, third-party biometric proof of personhood services, and (if it must) third-party government ID services. Passkeys, it says, “are lightweight, require a human to do something, and don’t require your ID. The tradeoff is that there is no proof of individuality or anything other than ‘a human probably did something.’ Nevertheless, it’s a great starting point.”

The post mentions World ID as an example of a third-party service that used biometrics as a basis to prove humanness, and says “the internet needs verification solutions like this, where your account information, usage data, and identity never mix.”

Government identity solutions are framed as an obligation or a last resort. “In some countries, such as the UK and Australia, governments require us to use these. These are the least secure, least private, and least preferred.”

A brief note points to a debate happening in tandem with (or in a grey area between) the person-versus-agent battle. Reddit acknowledges that humans will use AI to write posts and that “it can feel off.” The company doesn’t intend to do anything about it, for now. “Before there was AI slop, there was slop,” it says. “It’s not a new problem, and it’s one that Reddit, with its voting and moderation system, is better than most at dealing with.”

The final point is of interest in that it sees Reddit wading into the big picture question: is AI making what people produce any better? Is it capable of generating posts that sizzle? This is not a question of verification, but one of appetite. Reddit, it seems, is facing the reality that generative AI is part of the landscape now – but the platform would prefer if it wasn’t.

I don’t want no bot, a bot’s an account that can’t get no love from me

The promises of AI – automation, efficiency, companionship – fail to consider the side effects. Reporting from TechCrunch notes that “Reddit, in particular, has become a popular destination for bots that attempt to manipulate narratives, astroturf to shill for companies or their products, repost links, post spam, drive traffic, conduct research, and more.” And since Reddit has deals with AI firms that allow them to use its content to train their models, “there’s suspicion that bots are even posting questions on the site to generate more training data.”

The dead internet theory, which posits that the majority of online activity has been performed by bots since about 2016, is considered a conspiracy theory. But the trajectory generative AI has put us on leads to that becoming a reality. Cloudflare predicts that traffic from bots will exceed human traffic by 2027. Many of the social platforms pushing AI could soon see their human user base fade away as multiplying bots inundate feeds with programmed messaging, and real people go elsewhere to connect.

Article Topics

AI  |  biometrics  |  identity verification  |  passkeys  |  Reddit  |  World ID