As far as social media sites go, Reddit is as divisive as it gets. On the one hand, it has helped connect people, including the crew of last year’s Game of the Year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. On the other hand, it’s a cesspool for negativity and horrendous content, like a recently banned subreddit dedicated to sexualizing the robot child protagonist from Pragmata, Diana.
That’s not even to make mention of its massive problem with bots.
Discord Was Once Billed As The TeamSpeak Killer, But Thanks To Age Verification, It’s Seeing An “Incredible Surge” Of Users
With Discord under fire for its global age verification plans, TeamSpeak is seeing such a resurgence that it even reached hosting capacity.
While Reddit mods continue to play whack-a-mole with offensive subs, the platform as a whole might institute some rather extreme requirements to rid itself of the bot issue that has seemingly plagued every corner of the forum.
In speaking to the Technology Business Programming Network (TPBN) podcast, CEO Steve Huffman affirmed that things like Face or Touch ID have been considered.
“The most lightweight way is with something like Face ID or Touch ID,” Huffman said (Thanks Engadget for the spot). “They actually require a human presence, like a human has to touch, or do or look at something, so that actually just proves there’s a person there or gets you pretty far.”
If those don’t come to the platform, then other options, like third-party services that are decentralized or don’t require ID, could be instituted. Similarly, there could be a lane where ID-checking programs are used.
Anonymity Is Part Of What Has Made Reddit So Successful
Though the bot problem is understandably massive, the idea that Reddit could soon require that users verify themselves via some rather hard methods ultimately does go against the grain of the site, which is to provide anonymity. As Endgadget noted, that could be a dealbreaker for a lot of users, who would then leave the platform.
“Part of our promise for our users is we don’t know your name, but we do want to know you’re a person,” Huffman said. “It’ll be an evolution for us for a while, and probably every platform to find the right middle ground here.”
For his part, Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, admitted that Face ID wasn’t something he had thought of, but it might be something that needs to be done.
“RDDT requiring Face ID was not something I had on my bingo card, but something has got to be done about all the fake / botted content — I just don’t know how to sell face-scanning to redditors or even lurkers,” he wrote on social media.
If this comes to pass, Reddit won’t be the only platform to have some sort of requirement, as Discord recently experimented with age requirements to combat underage users engaging with adult content. Still, just because it’s normal doesn’t mean users will take to it, which could mean a mass exodus in protest.
DLSS 5 Can Finally Fix The Problems Games Didn’t Have
Like most AI ideas, DLSS 5 is not needed or wanted, yet is happening anyway.
