Reddit has announced plans to fight back after a large-scale AI fraud was carried out against users of the highly popular Change My View subreddit.
However, the company’s plans to take to fight AI bots may not be popular with users, as it could compromise the platform’s long-standing approach to privacy …
Unauthorized AI experiment on users
Researchers from the University of Zurich carried out an extensive AI fraud in the subreddit, with large language models taking on a variety of personas, including a rape victim and a trauma counsellor. In total, the AI bots posted more than 1,700 comments while pretending to be human.
This was done in violation of both Reddit rules, and well-established ethical standards requiring informed consent for psychological experiments.
CMV moderators filed a formal complaint with the university’s ethics commission, which responded by stating that it had issued a formal warning to the lead researcher, and would be boost prior reviews of proposed studies – but, outrageously, said that publication of the paper would go ahead.
Reddit fighting back
Reddit condemned the “improper and highly unethical experiment,” and CEO Steve Huffman says that it will be responding by introducing new measures designed to “keep Reddit human.”
To keep Reddit human and to meet evolving regulatory requirements, we are going to need a little more information. Specifically, we will need to know whether you are a human, and in some locations, if you are an adult. But we never want to know your name or who you are. The way we will do this is by working with various third-party services that can provide us with the essential information and nothing else. No solution is perfect—including the status quo—but we will do our best to preserve both the humanness and anonymity of Reddit.
But could prove an unpopular move
Reddit has always allowed anonymous accounts, and many of its users have good reasons to want to keep their identity private. They may, for example, wish to share very personal information in some subreddits.
While Huffman claims the new measures won’t reveal anyone’s name, TechCrunch reports a worrying lack of transparency about the company’s plans.
A Reddit spokesperson declined to explain under what circumstances the company would require users to go through a verification process [and] wouldn’t share more details about which third-party services the company would use or what kind of personally identifying information users would have to offer up.
The site also points to a recent example of the risks of anonymous accounts becoming identifiable.
Just look how Meta handed over private conversations between a Nebraska woman and her 17-year-old daughter, which discussed the latter’s plans to terminate a pregnancy. Meta’s assistance led law enforcement to acquire a search warrant, which resulted in felony charges for both the mother and daughter.
Some better Reddit news
On a more positive note, there are plenty of Redditors who prefer the old interface to the new one, and Huffman promised to keep old.reddit online “as long as people are using it.”
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
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