- The CEO of Reddit has spoken about verification
- Face ID or Touch ID could be used to prove you are human
- Nothing has been decided or implemented on Reddit yet
Reddit has a serious bot problem, and CEO Steve Huffman has talked about ways it could prove posts are made by humans — including the possibility that Face ID and Touch ID verification could be required.
Huffman made the comments in an interview with TBPN (via Engadget ) while discussing the idea of making Reddit more valuable to its users and opening up the platform to people who haven’t used it before.
“The easiest way [to verify a user is human] is with something like Face ID,” Huffman said, before going on to list more “heavy” options such as ID-checking services and other alternatives in between.
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Reddit is looking at access key technology in general, Huffman said: “They actually require a human presence. A human has to touch, or do, or look at something. It actually just proves that there’s a person there, or gets you pretty far.”
‘We want to know that you are a person’
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says that while there are legitimate types of AI content on the platform, the company is considering Face ID and other access key verification methods — among other options — to ensure there’s a human behind each prompt, while allowing users to remain anonymous: pic.twitter.com/Erv2jfj9QuMarch 20, 2026
Huffman also said that the Internet as a whole needs better third-party tools to verify that someone is human without requiring any form of ID and without affecting users’ privacy and security.
Reddit is not the only online platform struggling with an influx of automated bots, especially with the advent of generative AI to power them. We are reaching the stage where bot traffic is overtaking human traffic on the web.
While platforms like X and Facebook seem okay with AI-generated content being sent to the masses, it’s something Reddit is keen to crack down on – while respecting the anonymity of their users.
“Part of our promise to our users is that we don’t know your name, but we want to know that you’re a person,” Huffman said. “It’s going to be an evolution for us for a while, and probably any platform to find the right middle ground here.”
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