Reddit Considers Iris Scans for User Verification – Privacy or Overreach?

Reddit's rumored biometric verification system sparks debate: Is Big Tech crossing the line—or just keeping up with Web3's 'trustless' dystopia?

The eyeball economy

Forget passwords—your irises could soon be the key to posting memes. Sources suggest Reddit may implement iris scanning to combat bots and fake accounts. No price tag mentioned (yet), but remember: if you're not paying, you're the product.

Crypto's ironic twist

Decentralized identity solutions exist—but centralized platforms keep reinventing surveillance wheels. Meanwhile, biometric data breaches could make crypto hacks look quaint. Your keys, your coins; your retinas, Reddit's problem?

The verification trap

Every 'for your safety' measure chips at anonymity. Next up: KYC for shitposting. But hey—at least VCs will call it 'identity infrastructure' and throw $50M at it.

Reddit is in talks to deploy World ID on its platform

Tools for Humanity founded World ID six years ago, to provide users with a universal basic income, offering them a digital asset called Worldcoin in exchange for scanning their eyeballs with an Orb. According to reports, when World ID users scan their irises in one of the company’s Orbs, they get free Worldcoins. The token is worth just under a dollar at the time of writing this article.

This development also comes off the back of a recent issue involving Reddit and the University of Zurich. According to reports, lawyers representing the social media platform sent formal legal demands to the university whose researchers used AI to impersonate actual users in an experiment carried out to showcase the powers of AI persuasion. In addition, states across the United States are considering new laws that will require internet companies to verify the age of their users.

As a result of these developments, there has been renewed urgency to find ways to verify some of the information people give to online platforms while also providing them with adequate privacy and anonymity which has been seen as a characteristic of the web. Last month, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman said AI and age verification laws could force the firm to check if its users are humans and are of a certain age.

Huffman said the company could work with third-party platforms to avoid having to directly collect user information. “Specifically, we will need to know whether you are a human, and in some locations, if you are an adult,” said Huffman. “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.”

In response to the update, many users have threatened to boycott the platform. Most users said they would delete their accounts or move to other platforms if Reddit were to adopt the verification system. “Tell me – should I be happy that Reddit may enter the crypto space or sad that they want to verify us users by a method we already declined when [World] was launched?” a Reddit user said.

Aside from Reddit users, World’s biometric data collection using its Orbs has also faced pushback from many industry advocates and policymakers. As of May, the project had reported that more than 12 million individuals had scanned their irises using the Orb. World also announced plans to debut in six United States cities in April, including Atlanta, San Francisco, Miami, Nashville, and Austin.

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