Redditors world wide had been scandalized final week after studying {that a} group of researchers launched a swarm of AI-powered, human-impersonating bots on the “Change My View” subreddit. The large-scale experiment was designed to discover simply how persuasive AI may be.
The bots posted over 1,700 feedback, adopting personas like abuse survivors or controversial identities like an anti-Black Lives Matter advocate.
For Reddit, the incident was a mini-nightmare. Reddit’s model is related to authenticity — a spot the place actual folks come to share actual opinions. If that human-focused ecosystem is disturbed with AI slop or turns into a spot the place folks can’t belief that they’re getting info from precise people, it may do greater than threaten Reddit’s core identification. Reddit’s backside line might be at stake, for the reason that firm now sells its content material to OpenAI for coaching.
The corporate condemned the “improper and extremely unethical experiment” and filed a grievance with the college that ran it. However that experiment was just one of what’s going to possible be many cases of generative AI bots pretending to be people on Reddit for quite a lot of causes, from the scientific to the politically manipulative.
To guard customers from bot manipulation and “maintain Reddit human,” the corporate has quietly signaled an upcoming motion – one which may be unpopular with customers who come to Reddit for an additional purpose: anonymity.
On Monday, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman shared in a post that Reddit would begin working with “numerous third-party providers” to confirm a consumer’s humanity. This represents a big step for a platform that has traditionally required nearly no private info for customers to create an account.
“To maintain Reddit human and to satisfy evolving regulatory necessities, we’re going to want a little bit extra info,” Huffman wrote. “Particularly, we might want to know whether or not you’re a human, and in some places, in case you are an grownup. However we by no means need to know your identify or who you’re.”
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(Social media corporations have already began implementing ID checks after not less than 9 states and the U.Okay. and handed legal guidelines mandating age verification to guard youngsters on their platforms.)
A Reddit spokesperson declined to clarify beneath what circumstances the corporate would require customers to undergo a verification course of, although they did affirm that Reddit already takes measures to ban “dangerous” bots. The spokesperson additionally wouldn’t share extra particulars about which third-party providers the corporate would use or what sort of personally figuring out info customers must provide up.
Many corporations at this time depend on verification platforms like Persona, Alloy, Stripe Id, Plaid, and Footprint, which normally require a government-issued ID to confirm age and humanity. Then there’s the newer and extra speculative tech, like Sam Altman’s Instruments for Humanity and its eye-scanning “proof of human” gadget.
Opponents to ID checks say there are knowledge privateness and safety dangers to sharing your private info with social media platforms. That’s very true for a platform like Reddit, the place folks come to submit experiences they possibly by no means would have if their names had been hooked up to them.
It’s not troublesome to think about a world through which authorities would possibly subpoena Reddit for the identification of, for instance, a pregnant teen asking about abortion experiences on r/girls in states the place it’s now unlawful. Simply look how Meta handed over personal conversations between a Nebraska lady and her 17-year-old daughter, which mentioned the latter’s plans to terminate a being pregnant. Meta’s help led regulation enforcement to accumulate a search warrant, which resulted in felony fees for each the mom and daughter.
That’s precisely the chance Reddit hopes to keep away from by tapping outdoors companies to supply “the important info and nothing else,” per Huffman, who emphasised that “we by no means need to know your identify or who you’re.”
“Anonymity is crucial to Reddit,” he stated.
The CEO additionally famous that Reddit would proceed to be “extraordinarily protecting of your private info” and “will proceed to push again towards extreme or unreasonable calls for from public or personal authorities.”