When a team of research engineers decided to let loose a swarm of AI-bots pretending to be humans in the well-known "Change My View" forum on Reddit, Redditors worldwide found themselves in a tizzy. This mass experiment was engineered to assess how convincing an AI can actually be.

The bots made a whopping 1,700 comments, role-playing as individuals from traumatic backgrounds or as advocates of contentious stances, such as opposing the Black Lives Matter movement.

To Reddit, a brand rooted in the authenticity of genuine people expressing unfiltered thoughts, this was more than just an annoyance. If the sanctity of its platform was compromised by AI clutter, or it turned into a space where users couldn't trust that they were interacting with real people, it wouldn't just dent Reddit's identity. It could threaten the company's profitability, especially now as it sells content to OpenAI for AI training.

The company vociferously criticized the "unauthorized and deeply flawed experiment," even lodging an official complaint with the orchestrating university. However, this is probably just the tip of the iceberg with regard to AI bots masquerading as human on Reddit for various reasons, including scientific curiosity to more sinister, political manipulation.

Upholding Reddit's "humanness" and protect users from bot meddling, the firm subtly alluded to a future effort that could irritate Reddit fans. for its guarantee of anonymity.

Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, revealed in a post that Reddit plans to collaborate with "various third-party services" to ensure a user's humanness – a significant leap for a platform that has always required minimal personal information for account creation.

As it turns out, this step taken by Reddit aligns with an emerging trend among social media companies. As countries like the U.K. as well as nine states in the U.S. pass laws mandating age checks to protect minors on these platforms, ID verification is quickly becoming the norm.

How and under what conditions Reddit will enforce this verification process remains unclear, even as the company confirmed their ongoing measures to boot out malicious bots. The specifics about which third-party services would be used and what kind of information users might have to provide are still under wraps.

Does handing over personal information to social media platforms spell a data privacy and security hazard? Many critics of the ID check process think so, and they hold that the risk is even more palpable for a platform like Reddit, where users often share experiences they wouldn't want linked to their real-world identities.

The fear that authorities could command Reddit to reveal the identity of its users under certain circumstances is real. A chilling parallel comes to mind Meta gave away confidential conversations between a mother and her pregnant teenage daughter who were discussing abortion plans, leading to criminal charges against them both.

Reddit is determined to avoid this precarious situation by only collaborating with firms offering "essentials and nothing more," promises Huffman, who repeatedly stressed Reddit's strong commitment to keeping users' identity confidential.

Huffman asserted, "Anonymity is crucial to Reddit," at the same time promising continued protection of personal information and resilience against excessive demands from public or private organizations.