Reddit Takes On Bots With 'Human Verification' Requirements

Reddit Takes On Bots With 'Human Verification' Requirements (techcrunch.com) 54 Reddit is rolling out human-verification checks for accounts that show signs of bot-like behavior, while also labeling approved automated accounts that provide useful services. The social media company stressed that these checks will only happen if something appears "fishy," and that it is "not conducting sitewide human verification." TechCrunch reports: To identify potential bots, Reddit is using specialized tooling that looks at account-level signals and other factors -- like how quickly the account is attempting to write or post content. Using AI to write posts or comments, however, is not against its policies (though community moderators may set their own rules). To verify an account is human, Reddit will leverage third-party tools like passkeys from Apple, Google, YubiKey, and other third-party biometric services, like Face ID or even Sam Altman's World ID -- or, in some countries, the use of government IDs. Reddit notes this last category may be required in some countries like the U.K. and Australia and some U.S. states, because of local regulations on age verification, but it's not the company's preferred method. "If we need to verify an account is human, we'll do it in a privacy-first way," Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman wrote in the announcement Wednesday. "Our aim is to confirm there is a person behind the account, not who that person is. The goal is to increase transparency of what is what on Reddit while preserving the anonymity that makes Reddit unique. You shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other." To verify an account is human, Reddit will leverage third-party tools like passkeys from Apple, Google, YubiKey, and other third-party biometric services, like Face ID or even Sam Altman's World ID -- or, in some countries, the use of government IDs. Reddit notes this last category may be required in some countries like the U.K. and Australia and some U.S. states, because of local regulations on age verification, but it's not the company's preferred method. "If we need to verify an account is human, we'll do it in a privacy-first way," Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman wrote in the announcement Wednesday. "Our aim is to confirm there is a person behind the account, not who that person is. The goal is to increase transparency of what is what on Reddit while preserving the anonymity that makes Reddit unique. You shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other." Slowly boiling the frog? (Score:4, Interesting) Lets see how long this lasts before everyone has to submit to "human verification". And wonder how long reddit will last when people start moving away cos of this. Re: (Score:2) Exactly what I was thinking. Soon you won't be able to scrape anything even if it's not abusive. So this is about AI slop spam from clankers (Score:3) If this continues sites like Facebook and Reddit won't have dated sell or advertising that they can even pretend it's worthwhile. This is why you see all those age verification laws. They are heavily push Re: (Score:2) You aren't that interesting either and yet you found a way to look interesting with sock puppet accounts, maybe they'll just do the same. The problem is that a sock puppet uses an actual human to operate it, while bots run with little or no need for human effort. So a human can turn out a handful of posts with sock puppets, while bots can be churn out thousands and thousands of posts, swamping any system with slop. Re: (Score:3) Sure, except the frog isn't as stupid, and will jump out before it boils. Whereas the reddit populace will swallow it and line up. Will there be a "validated" badge when everyone is validated? Re: (Score:1) Re: (Score:2) And wonder how long reddit will last when people start moving away cos of this. People won't move away because bots get screened. They'll start moving away if the screening process shows too many false positives. Their bigger risk is financial. If they're honest about getting rid of bots, traffic and subreddit participation will slow thereby resulting in reduced ad revenue and potential and valuation. If they're OK with that, then they'll do well. If, however, their shareholders press them to "increase ad revenue at all costs" then they'll loosen up bot restrictions, claim that the tech That frog is long cooked. (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) Moving to where? Most forums are dead and gone. Genuinely curious. If required, I'll delete my account/posts/comments (Score:2) The day it's required, I'll delete all my posts/comments/.. and my account. Reddit is not required in my life. I can get information and interact with peoples somewhere else. Re: (Score:2) The day it's required, I'll delete all my posts/comments/.. and my account. No, you won't. You'll be locked out because you won't verify your ID. If this is your concern, delete it all now. Re: (Score:2) There's no "Delete all posts" button on Reddit, and even deleting your account doesn't delete your posts. Which means the only way to delete the posts is to go through each one by one. And what are the chances that a repetitive task like that is going to be seen as "bot like" behavior? 100%? Re: (Score:1) Which means the only way to delete the posts is to go through each one by one. And what are the chances that a repetitive task like that is going to be seen as "bot like" behavior? 100%? I would assume it's very high, but you could do it in a way that would be less likely to trip the detectors by adding randomness and doing it over a long period. If one starts now, one probably has plenty of time to get it done. Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) There's that too. And that adds more problems. The recommended way to delete all your posts (recommended by privacy advocates, not Reddit) is to edit them to be garbage, and then delete them after that. The only tools that can do that for you automatically with your likely thousands of posts will almost certainly flag every bot detection algorithm that's written properly. Re: (Score:2) Yes, using a bot to delete posts will guarantee you look like a bot. That's the problem. Re: (Score:2) The day it's required, I'll delete all my posts/comments/.. and my account. Reddit is not required in my life. I can get information and interact with peoples somewhere else. You may walk away, but the level at which you assume to have control of “your” content, is truly astonishing. It’ll be downright comical when AI is asked by the Board how to generate more Reddit revenue, and its answer is to restore from backup. Re: (Score:2) First they came for... (Score:4, Insightful) Re: (Score:2) So it kind of wrecks any meaningful discussion or nerding out. The trouble is all that is good for engagement so nobody really wants to take it out completely. What Reddit really wants is to be able to tell the bots from the real people so that CAPTCHA (Score:3) So we're giving up on CAPTCHA then, are we? And the only alternative we can come up with is literal ID verification? Something tells me that we skipped a step - i.e. a better CAPTCHA. Re: (Score:1) So we're giving up on CAPTCHA then, are we? And the only alternative we can come up with is literal ID verification? Something tells me that we skipped a step - i.e. a better CAPTCHA. Giving up on captcha? Yes, of course, they no longer work. Skipping a step? Only reading. "literal ID verification" isn't for human verification or bots, it's only for the countries/states that legally require them, and will be collected regardless how much or little you look like a bot. Go yell at your government if you live in one of those places. To verify an account is human, Reddit will leverage third-party tools like passkeys from Apple, Google, YubiKey, and other third-party biometric services, like Fa Re: (Score:3) LLMs have made CAPTCHA basically useless. Not to mention the fact I have been flagged as a bot by reCAPTCHA regularly (I guess "Uses Linux and Chromium or Palemoon" makes me a bot even though I did fucking select all the boxes with bicycles, and then traffic lights, and then the boxes that covered a motorcycle, and...") At this point it's a tool with false positives that real bots can bypass anyway. This is the nightmare everyone has been warning about, but the powers that be are too gullible (in the case of Re: (Score:1) Do we really want mass unemployment and business failures because of a giant con job? We The People? Not most of us. TPTB? Yes, they sure do. High unemployment is just the thing when you want people to volunteer to be cannon fodder for your endless war. Re: (Score:2) No, I'm talking about Google's reCAPTCHA. It's blocked me at least twice. The only way to find out is to change over to the audio reCAPTCHA where it'll tell you you're blocked, otherwise they (sadistically, because nobody other than humans would actually suffer here, so this is more evidence Googlers are shit people) lock you in a loop of visual reCAPTCHAs with no feedback beyond "Try again". Re: (Score:2) Reddit has a problem where it adds too much friction it loses users because it's not as useful as site as Facebook. I'm an introvert so Facebook isn't my thing but people I know who are extraverts or just want to find hobbyists with the same niche hobbies make a lot of use of Facebook to do that. And it does work for that purpose. But Reddit doesn't have any of that and the bots have kind of made t Corrected headline - reddit will sell user data (Score:3, Insightful) Re: (Score:2) I've been a reddit user for many years. Even before the release of chatgpt, I knew that I was training a robot. I liked this idea, because I believed my posts had value and the robot training would be better if it included my posts Slashdot is already human verified (Score:2) How about we verify the moderators here? (Score:2) Or perhaps AI would be better at eliminating dupe posts? There was already a story on this right here just a couple of days ago. https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] Re: (Score:3, Funny) We have verified that the moderators here are less competent than a low-end LLM Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:1) Re: (Score:1) Well... (Score:2) I've noticed a trend on Reddit these days, now when someone doesn't like your comment, they say it's an AI post as a way of dismissing it. It would be kind of handy at those times to be able to say "Ha, no - verified human!" I guess that may not outweigh the downsides though. Human Verification Good; Identification Bad (Score:2) I'm all for human verification but I would draw the line at proving who I am. I use reddit specifically because it's anonymous enough, assuming you don't post anything personally identifiable. Re: (Score:2) "To continue, please enter the number of occurrences of the letter "R" in "Strawberry" Seems more likely to work than picking photos with bicycles. sample test (Score:3) You're walking in the desert, and you spot a tortoise upside down ... Human responses would be a) what's a tortoise? b) which desert? c) Did I bring sunblock? -- if you're from the Valley d) Did I tell you about my mother? Re: (Score:2) Funny... (Score:2) Funny that they list 'passkeys' as a proof of human. Peel it back and a passkey is like an ssh keypair. They *could* try to employ attestation to limit to 'blessed passkey vendors', but it's going to be a tough scenario at all. If folks are determined to 'bot' it up, a pretty legitimate passkey can be part of that. It was never designed to serve the purpose of proving 'human' interaction.