Reddit CEO considers Face ID and ID verification for all users

Reddit is one of the most-used platforms on the internet, and like so many others, it's fighting an uphill battle against bots and spam. With AI slop becoming the norm, distinguishing real users from fake ones has become harder than ever, as AI-generated content floods the platform at an unprecedented scale.

Now, Reddit is looking to fight back. In a recent interview with TBPN, CEO Steve Huffman spoke openly about potential countermeasures and he didn't mince words: "For us, Reddit is for humans. That is our platform, that is our product. It's human connection and community"

Face ID, Touch ID, or straight-up ID checks?

Among the "lighter" options Huffman floated were Face ID and Touch ID, physical actions that bots simply can't perform, at least not yet. On the more extreme end of the spectrum, full ID verification is also being considered, a measure already used for regulatory purposes in several countries.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian weighed in on the plans over on X, expressing mixed feelings. He said Face ID for Reddit "wasn't on his bingo card," but acknowledged that measures against fake content are necessary. He's not sure how you'd sell face scanning to Redditors.

The Reddit community, naturally, had its own take. "That'll definitely fix the problem, by driving away the last real users you have left," one user quipped.

Privacy concerns are inevitable

Pushback around data privacy was always going to be part of this conversation. Discord recently went through its own headaches over age verification requirements, and the fallout wasn't pretty. Whether Reddit is headed down the same path remains to be seen.

For now, nothing is set in stone, but the fact that Reddit's CEO is publicly entertaining these ideas signals just how serious the platform's bot problem has become. Whether the community will accept biometric or ID based verification as a necessary evil, or reject it outright, is another question entirely.