If Reddit required face scans to prove you’re human… would you still use it?
With AI bots getting harder to detect, there’s been growing discussion around platforms using biometric verification (like face scans) to confirm real users.
Cool in theory... Reddit is full of bots, fake accounts and garbage engagement. But let’s be real…
Reddit without anonymity isn’t Reddit.
The whole point of this platform is:
Saying things you wouldn’t say elsewhere
Being anonymous without consequences tied to your real identity
Having raw, unfiltered discussions
And now the proposed solution is… scan your face?
But what's the guarantee tech companies not to store or misuse biometric data.
Even if they promise they won’t store it:
No one believes that
Data leaks happen all the time
And once that line is crossed, there’s no going back
On one side, identity verification could:
Reduce bots and fake accounts
Improve trust in conversations
Clean up spam-heavy communities
On the other hand, Reddit has always been built on anonymity, and changes like this could shift how people use the platform entirely.
There are also alternative ideas being floated:
Zero-knowledge proof verification
Device-based authentication
Temporary “human verification” tokens
Two questions for the PH community here:
If you use Reddit, what would you want: fewer bots or actual anonymity?
Should Product Hunt apply the same verification to find and delete bots or fake accounts?
P.S. I am currently working on a pilot with Reddit's ex-CTO to test identity verification on my subreddit. I will check the sentiment of the community at my subreddit r/GrowthHacking and report back here.
Replies
Yes, I'd use it as long as I can keep multiple reddit accounts. Also, does this mean reddit would be able to face ban? :/
Well, rather than ‘prove you’re human’, it would be better if reddit's goal is to be ‘build for humans first.’ If the platform works for real people, wouldn’t that naturally push bots out? What's the need for a face scan in such a case
There are other platforms I can use if I don't need to be anonymous, but reddit will forever be my go to for anonymous activities.
Hello Aria
Hard no from me on face scans. The trade-off is way off — you sacrifice the one thing that makes Reddit uniquely valuable (anonymous, genuine opinion) to solve a problem that will just mutate into a harder one.
The real question AI detection poses is about behavior patterns, not identity. And honestly, building for trust without biometrics is more interesting. We're doing something adjacent with Hello Aria — an AI assistant in WhatsApp/iOS. We want users to trust that the AI is representing them faithfully. That trust has to be earned through behavior, not imposed through surveillance. Launching on PH April 10th if you want to see our approach.
Reddit with face scans = LinkedIn. Hard pass.
No. And neither would 80% of Reddit's power users. The platform's value IS anonymity. Face scans solve a bot problem by creating a surveillance problem. Better approach: behavioral analysis + proof of work. Verify the human without destroying what makes the platform human.
I think in general we need better human verification online, something effective against bots without forcing people to trade away their privacy.
You don't need face scan to avoid bots. The problem is that reddit using a simple recaptcha to protect against bots and only is not a sufficient. I'm saying that working with web scraping and bypassing anti-bot systems all day, but even for me this kind of bots are trash. Recently I did some posts on different communities about the scraping api I did and I got a bunch of bots talking about proxy and sending me DM.
If reddit starts working on anti-bot system like fingerprints, and other types of captcha like Shopee does, we will decrease a lot a number of bots. Shopee verify 212 fingerprints of a user and they have their own captcha system.