Reddit wants to do more to show the humanity of their users after receiving backlash for a recent AI test that unwittingly was performed on Reddit members.
Last month, 404 Media revealed that a group of University of Zurich researchers had conducted a test of AI Bot profiles on Reddit to determine if these bots were able to sway opinions about certain controversial topics.
They could.
According to the official report
All our treatments are superior to human performances in a significant way, with persuasive rates that range between 3 and 6 times greater than human baseline.
Redditors are angry because AI bots have been more convincing than human beings in changing their minds about controversial topics. They were not aware that they had interacted with a bot profile.
What Reddit is looking to correct.
According to a Reddit community update, Steve Huffman the CEO of Reddit shared that soon they will be adding new qualifications to show users are human.
Huffman, as per
” We will need to collect a bit more information to keep Reddit human, and meet the evolving requirements of regulatory agencies. We will ask you to confirm that you are human and, in certain locations, whether or not you are of legal age. We do not want to know who or what you are. We will achieve this by working with third-party service providers who can give us the necessary information, and nothing more.”
This will likely require third-party verification using tools such as Persona which facilitates ID validation on YouTube and LinkedIn.
Reddit is likely to adopt similar features, but as Huffman points out, the site wants to make sure that Redditors can maintain anonymity, if desired.
We will try to maintain the anonymity and humanness of Reddit. “No solution or status quo is perfect. As we progress, we will continue to share. “
You’ll have to show that you are a human to be able to see a form of indication on your posts and profile. This will help to eliminate AI generated users.
It’s a great solution but it is difficult to scale. I am curious to know how willing Reddit members are to confirm their identity.
Huffman has also announced that he will keep “old Reddit”, which is the original Reddit, running on the internet:
” Old.reddit refers to the Reddit version that we created in the middle of the 2000s. It’s not scalable, impossible to build on and ugly as f. At the end of this month, we will shut it down. Just kidding. Why do I say things like that? “We’ll find a way to get around this and keep the site online for as long as users use it.”
You can view an older version of Reddit online, which dates back to a previous era on the Internet:
Reddit will support the old version of Reddit until all the original users have died out.
If you’re looking for a little nostalgia, then head over to the old Reddit.