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Would-be Reddit competitor Digg just shut down<\/a> because it couldn\u2019t get a handle on the bots overrunning its site. On Wednesday, Reddit said it\u2019s taking on the challenge itself. <\/p>\n The company will begin labeling automated accounts that are providing a service to users, similar to how the \u201cgood bots\u201d are labeled on X, and it will now require accounts that are suspected of being bots to verify if they\u2019re human.<\/p>\n Reddit stresses this is not going to be a sitewide verification requirement, and will only occur if something suggests that the account isn\u2019t human, including its activity on the site or other technical markers. If the account can\u2019t pass the test, it may be restricted, Reddit said.<\/p>\n To identify potential bots, Reddit is using specialized tooling that looks at account-level signals and other factors \u2014 like how quickly the account is attempting to write or post content. Using AI to write posts or comments, however, is not against its policies (though community moderators may set their own rules).<\/p>\n To verify an account is human, Reddit will leverage third-party tools like passkeys from Apple, Google, YubiKey, and other third-party biometric services, like Face ID or even Sam Altman\u2019s World ID<\/a> \u2014 or, in some countries, the use of government IDs. Reddit notes this last category may be required in some countries like the U.K. and Australia and some U.S. states, because of local regulations on age verification, but it\u2019s not the company\u2019s preferred method.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we need to verify an account is human, we\u2019ll do it in a privacy-first way,\u201d Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman wrote in the announcement<\/a> Wednesday. \u201cOur aim is to confirm there is a person behind the account, not who that person is. The goal is to increase transparency of what is what on Reddit while preserving the anonymity that makes Reddit unique. You shouldn\u2019t have to sacrifice one for the other.\u201d<\/p>\n The changes are meant to address the growing problem of bots engaging on social platforms and the web more broadly, where they\u2019re often used to influence politics, spread misinformation, inflate popularity, secretly market products, generate fake ad clicks, and more. According to Cloudflare, the traffic from bots will exceed human traffic by 2027<\/a>, when you include bots like web crawlers and AI agents in the mix.<\/p>\n Reddit, in particular, has become a popular destination<\/a> for bots that attempt to manipulate narratives, astroturf to shill for companies or their products, repost links, post spam, drive traffic, conduct research<\/a>, and more. Plus, because Reddit\u2019s content is used for AI training<\/a> thanks to lucrative deals with AI model providers, there\u2019s suspicion that bots<\/a> are even posting questions on the site to generate more training data, particularly in areas where AI is lacking information.<\/p>\n Reddit\u2019s other co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, has also addressed a related problem<\/a> known as the \u201cdead internet theory,\u201d a conjecture that bots outnumber humans online and that the vast majority of content, interactions, and web activity on the internet is automated or AI-generated, rather than from people. In the age of AI agents, the theory is becoming a reality.<\/p>\n The company announced last year<\/a> that it would begin to require human verification in response to the growing number of bots and the need to meet \u201cevolving regulatory requirements.\u201d But the company today notes that the current solutions, which Huffman recently discussed on the TBPN podcast<\/a>, aren\u2019t the best.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best long-term solutions will be decentralized, individualized, private, and ideally not require an ID at all,\u201d Huffman wrote in today\u2019s announcement. <\/p>\n Alongside these changes, Reddit said it would continue to remove bots and spam, where it averages 100,000 account removals per day, and rely on reports of suspected bots, with improved tooling still to come. Developers running so-called good bots can learn more about labeling them with the new \u201cAPP\u201d label in the r\/redditdev community<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n