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Reddit will tighten verification to keep out human-like AI bots

⁨297⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/06/reddit-will-tighten-verification-to-keep-out-human-like-ai-bots/

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Comments

Sort:hotnewtop
  • glimse@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    No they won’t lol

    If they didn’t do it already, it’s not gonna happen now. This is lip service to the shareholders

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    • CluckN@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      They want more users to make accounts. Blocking nsfw content to non-users was a start but now they can make a bigger push.

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      • Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Nsfw Still works in old.reddit as a non user.

        Or so a friend tells me

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    • doodledup@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      It’s in their best interest to suppress non-human conversations. What are you talking about?

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      • glimse@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Is it? Reddit has been full of bots for years.

        And if the r/CMV thing didn’t make it apparently, the recent wave of them weren’t “caught in the act” and only became a “problem” when the researchers announced their shitty experiment.

        If realistic chat bots can fool the masses, why on earth would reddit get rid of them? It helps their metrics. “Look at how active our site is! Buy stock!”

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      • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        No it isn’t and they have openly talked about doing this practice back in the early days of reddit to make the site appear more active than it really was. Nothing has changed.

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      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Only their own bots are allowed.

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      • Merva@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Where on Earth have you gotten that bizarre idea? It is in their interest to promote engagement, human or not, by any means necessary.

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  • libra00@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Yeah it’s definitely the bots and not the fashy admins that drove me away from reddit.

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    • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I mean the bots don’t help. The sheer number of obviously AI subreddits and response farms is crazy. There’s like 6 prominent “Am I the Assholes”, a bunch of text message “screenshot” subreddits which have always been easy to fake, and a bunch of “explain the joke” ones too. I stop reading halfway through most text posts and comments because it’s obviously AI

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      • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        the number of the explain the joke threads on the all page is ridiculous.

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      • libra00@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        That’s fair, it just seems like that if they’re going down the list of problems looking for things they can do to make reddit a better place, it doesn’t make sense to not start at the top.

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    • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Image

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      • hazypenguin@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I got banned from reddit for a few days once because I posted something similar. Was told I was threatening violence. Lol

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    • booly@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Everyone has their own reasons. If you disagree with their management, then you should celebrate other people choosing to leave, even if for different reasons than your own.

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      • libra00@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I’m not complaining about people leaving, just saying the bots are not the biggest problem.

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    • JakenVeina@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Por que, no los dos?

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      • libra00@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I mean it’s definitely both, but the fashy admins were the last straw.

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  • militaryintelligence@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Unauthorized AI bots

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    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      100%. Reddit loves bots that they control, like the ones that go back and constantly re-post years old top rated, traffic driving content, complete with a replica of the entire comment section posted by hundreds/thousands of bots, because they can use it to do their bidding in pushing agendas and/or driving traffic/engagement.

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      • reiterationstation@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Am I overreacting aita and all of those question answer subs are all bots.

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  • billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    What a destroy 90% of their traffic?!?

    “That’s a bold move, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for ’em.”

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    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      AI bots.

      Not the rest of them.

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      • Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Yeah the manual bots are ok (humans?) I guess

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  • Empricorn@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Reddit: User content belongs to us. You can’t scrape, collect, use, or have bots interact with it… unless you pay us.

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    • phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Also reddalso Reddit: since all users have left, most of our traffic now consists of posts from AI bots that we’re really really blocking!!

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    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Lemmy is the same in terms of ownership btw, as is pretty much every online platform. Anything you post is owned by the owner of the instance that it is on and that it federates to. You don’t own it.

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      • Empricorn@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I dare you to compare the largest possible instance vs Reddit as a whole.

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  • RangerJosey@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I don’t believe that for 1 millisecond.

    Spez won’t be able to stop himself from enshitifying reddit in any way he can to appease those VC pump&dump scammers he’s spent the last decade ruining reddit for.

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  • the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Fuck reddit, It’s a shithole.

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    • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Sometimes I have to return for various reasons. God. Some of them have absolutely bled over to the fediverse, but holy HELL are the people and the culture there messed up.

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      • the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Personally I feel like I am healing. I haven’t signed into reddit since they bent the knee to musk. I have noticed that I have become less toxic. Istill go off half cocked kike an idiot but I have been more tactful about it. I hope to keep working on it because I honestly never notices until I had been away from reddit for a few weeks.

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      • overload@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        What’s the difference between Reddit and Lemmy culturally? I thought that the people who moved over here held opinions fairly typical of Reddit.

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  • _druid@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    This has nothing to do with bots. Verification comes with more info provided on your part, which they will sell.

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    • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I got ecchi dolls (China knockoff, cheaper but decent) from a site called OtakuCrate once, they’ve emailed me to confirm that the R18 loot is back under new US regulations, which means future orders just require your legal identification. I live in Europe, so there’s no damn way I’m conforming to any privacy-invasive law, and I’m also not stupid.

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    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      And they’ll be able to hand over to the government on demand when you say something the government doesn’t like. They started all this during the previous administration, when the government were pressuring all social media companies to push their agenda and censor things they didn’t like. X changed course, Facebook has now changed course, but Reddit is staying the course and will do whatever the government of the day tells them to.

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    • SerotoninSwells@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      It can be both. Reddit has a history of fabricating conversations. The way they sell advertising implies a certain level of engagement from their user base which can lead to bots pushing products in the form of reviews or by mention.

      I think it’s worth noting that Reddit, at one time, did have third party bot protection; however, it only protected their advertising. I can only imagine what the rest of their traffic looks like, but I would not be surprised if they were using bots of their own.

      Like you said, they can make some money selling your information but they can also control the narrative how they choose.

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  • lath@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Lol, they’re the ones using the bots to fake engagement in the first place.

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    • PostnataleAbtreibung@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I Think Thies weil continue to work. Only foreign bots are exkulpiert.

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      • lath@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Hah, yeah. One could say it’s a form of digital nepotism.

        “Only our bots get go work here!”

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  • FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Too little, too late

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  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    *reddit will tag their own chatgpt bots to prevent them from being banned, and the through false positives will ban then last of the real users from the site.

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      i bet they also ignore half of the propaganda bots to look fair in thier moderations. the only signicant bannings we see is actual users, and the low hanging fruits, of and people posting links to thier businesses.

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  • Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    what about their own Ai bots lmao?

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  • huquad@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Oh no! Anyway

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  • ftbd@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I always get ‘Blocked by Network security’ for trying to access Reddit from a VPN

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    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Yeah they’ve blocked VPNs because they want to be able to know exactly who their users are. They don’t want anonymous anymore.

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    • x00z@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      If only they accepted the reality of massive residential proxy networks…

      A shitton of apps not only sell your data but also use your device as a tunnel.

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      • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        the users that posts links,a re using rotating mobile proxies, plus other sophisticated methods to hide thier browsers.

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  • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Don’t think they’re doing this out of the goodness of the hearts, they’re just trying to avoid the “shit in, shit out” affect of their data sample.

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    • henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Too late ~

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  • Fizz@lemmy.nz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The bots post better comments than most of their users.

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    • Litebit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Someone could create a forum for bots to discuss with each other. Call it Redbit. The bot could even steal questions from quota, reddit, lemmy, mastodon, Xitter, and every other forum, various AI bots can then reply to those questions with the best replies.

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      • BigPotato@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        That was just /r/subredditsimulator

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    • reiterationstation@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Today one said they brought shame to their family line by having a giant tattoo on their wrist of an ex (who was actually dead). Boyfriend just now noticed said tattoo after a year. Picture looked like every letter of the tattoo was in a random healing stage and they were standing on a tire with a random toe censored.

      It’s bad over there.

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  • StephaneF@jlai.lu ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    msgbrd.42web.io/7645238/index.php

    No register nor login, anonymity allowed. Messages having no date. The perfect place to publish one’s intimate thoughts, dreams, fears, fantasies.

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  • hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    “Drink verification can to continue”

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  • Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    What, like Xitter did?

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  • Devadander@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    They’re doing this to better identify you

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  • beanslink@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    No they wont. Just those who haven’t paid them first.

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  • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    step one: ban everyone who writes an emdash

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    • Manticore@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I like emdashes. I learned the alt code for en and em dashes just so I could use them. There is a difference between a hypen and an en dash, and a double-hyphen is but a simulacrum of the em dash!

      • Hyphen is just for double-barrelled words
      • An en dash is useful – at least sometimes – for inserting side thoughts
      • ah boy I sure hope my em dash isn’t interrup—
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      • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I am not convinced. Sending you to the crypto mines where all AI belong. See you in ten thousand years.

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    • Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I love em dashes. Fuck AI.

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  • Alborlin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    It’s already happening, I see I opened accounts but none of my comment gets posted with accounts I don’t know why , this is with new accounts

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      sounds like you got shadowbanned, you can check your username, by not logging in and click your profile.

      it usually says “cannot find profile” on a browser, which means shadowbanned.

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    • FourWaveforms@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      That’s a shadowban

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    • themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Same happened to me, old my old accounts got banned for no reason and new accounts gets banned as soon as I comment.

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      • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Your IP address/device fingerprint has been blacklisted.

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  • Brekky@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Suuuurrrre they will…

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  • masonlee@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Bots are all “f spez, I’m switching to lemmy!” Ever relatable, they are!

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