Spez (Reddit CEO) just put out an announcemen talking about how they'll verify humans via a new rectal probe in collaboration with Meta AI that 3D scans your log factory.

They should start with all the commenters in the thread praising the Spez.

Ooh, yay!
I just swung over myself after my eighth account permaban (with no link to alleged offending comment) within 24 hours of posting about how one of the admins is in regular contact with Ghislaine Maxwell while she's in prison🤔

That sounds tempting, but still won't make me rejoin reddit.

One more reason to be glad I left that shithole. Also, expect Redlib to finally be killed off soon.

they'll go to piefed; there's nothing to get ready for.

The only way I'll ever rejoin Reddit is if they fire that piece of shit, Spez, and every other piece of shit who had a hand in the monetization of their API access which destroyed third party apps like Apollo; and if they change that monetization, either making it free or making it so you have to be a paid Reddit subscriber to have expanded API access.

They did the whole thing with their API completely backwards, on purpose, to shut out the third party apps -- when they could have still been able to make money by doing it properly and not alienating a lot of their userbase.

And now that Reddit is effectively a right-wing cesspool of lies and bullshit, just like Twitter has become, even if they fix what they broke, it may not be worth rejoining.

or making it so you have to be a paid Reddit subscriber to have expanded API access.

Isn't that what they're doing? I've used Relay Pro via API until recently by paying for it.

The only reason I don't use that anymore is cause I went de-googled, so no play store subscription and thus no API access anymore, and since I can't stand the original app I came here.

There are so many ways to do human verification that have worked for years. The biggest reason bots are plaguing the internet is because these corpos don't really try anymore. There's literally no reason to do face scans or IDs other than to unanonymize people and take their data.

It's funny how they don't show you the comment.

I just got permabanned within a minute or so of posting something like "The only way to get Trump out of office is for 100,000 people to drag him out.". Appeal denied even though I said it was hyperbole.

I still like the sheer volume of content on Reddit but they are getting worse all the time.

I wonder if we will actually ever see the true numbers, I have a feeling they will realize that SOOOOOOOOOOO many of the users are bots and be forced to pull a shwitter.

We will see what happens, but I won't hold my breath for actual transparency.

Lemmy, piefed, kbin, all valid and handy, tbh.

what's important is that people go to the fediverse, and also contribute every now and then to the devs and instance owners for hosting costs!

Piefed does seem like a great alternative, but I'm in the "too good to be true" phase.

They made the prices so insane that most 3rd party apps couldn't justify the higher subscription price

Of course Spez won't make it sound like there's a problem. The problem is that they're slowly implementing ID verification. Soon, you'll have to provide your ID to prove you're a human. Spez's just trying to sprinkle in some "We don't want your data, we care about user privacy" BS to make the users feel safe for now. Google's doing the same thing by making it difficult to install apps from outside the Play Store.

Can someone explain? Isn't removing bots actually a good thing?

I don't think this should be an hyperbole. Get to work, now.

That's the neat part. The Fediverse doesn't eat itself; more activity on Piefed is more activity on Lemmy.

I don't think they give a shit about bots, as it inflates their traffic numbers and gives the illusion of a more robust user base. This is about gathering your data. They want to know who you are for marketing and other purposes.

Isnt everyone using it paying an API cost monthly? It should basically already be verified, otherwise why the fuck should anyone pay shit?

They're selectively asking for verification to do it. That's mixed, because:

• They'll only ask to verify "suspicious" accounts. So all the bots that "behave" are going to stay, which is what the bots will now optimize for.

• Verification will become another form of selective enforcement. Say the wrong then, and you get either verify or get banned.

• As for the methods, see for yourself:

When confirming that there is a human behind an account, we prefer third-party tools that keep a distance between verification and Reddit itself. Any system we use will not expose your real-world identity to Reddit nor your Reddit username or activity to any third party. There are a handful of ways to do this, and I’m sure there will be more. Each have their tradeoffs:

• Passkeys (which are well supported by Apple, Google, YubiKey, and various password managers) - These are lightweight, require a human to do something, and don’t require your ID. The tradeoff is that there is no proof of individuality or anything other than “a human probably did something.” Nevertheless, it’s a great starting point.

• Third-party biometric services - For example, World ID (yes, the Orb company, though they have non-Orb solutions as well). This technology unlocks proof-of-individual without requiring your name, government ID, or a centralized database. I think the internet needs verification solutions like this, where your account information, usage data, and identity never mix.

• Third-party government ID services - In some countries, such as the UK and Australia, governments require us to use these. These are the least secure, least private, and least preferred. When we are forced to do this, we design the integrations so that we never actually see your ID information, so your Reddit data cannot be tied to you.

Draw your own conclusion.

But my take? It's the worst of everything: Only the most primitive, obvious bots get banned. "Transparent," sycophantic bots will all stay on Reddit, and get even stealthier. Rebellious human users will get hit with verification, at the whim of whatever opaque algorithm determines they're "bot-like," which is a fantastic recipe for censorship without the appearance of doing so.

And this is all if you take Spez at his word. There's a lot of history suggesting you should not.

fitting translation for "meta"

There's a lot of blatant LLM bots on Reddit these days so I think it's a good thing they're doing this. It's also only a matter of time before those same bots start landing on Lemmy, even more so than they already have.

Name one way

The part where they don’t need or want Identity information is because they already know who you are from sign up.

Should we do some advertising on Reddit for Lemmy? On one hand it's a good exodus wave, but on the other hand it always gets libbed up after a migration wave

Place age-verification on routers and keep it there.

Yay! Welcome new Fedi-frens!!

Discord did the same thing didn't they?

Also reddit heavily used bots to fill they site with posts for years. They were one of the biggest ones. Kiss my ass reddit

Speak to a customer service agent while they ask you a few timed-dated questions

Video chat with a customer service agent.

if it's a real name account:

Small credit card charge to a card in your name.

provide a scan of a utility bill

provide a scan of a car title

Funny how this ties nicely into Meta’s lobbying for age verification and how it’s suddenly a conversation we keep seeing crop up. The pattern recognition tools in my brain see nothing but constant red flags these days.

They flooded the web with bots, advertisers are backing out because of it, and now both Spez and Zuck are panicking.

All of Those are a deal breaker for me.

Just open it all up to everyone. Fuck it. There's a point we all just get bored of it

You all complain but in 5 years you'll all defend it like its a gold standard

You have a link to this administrator of Reddit being in contact with Maxwell? Inquiring minds want to know

Clearly yes.

So instead of face scans or giving them my ID I have a video call with them and give them access to all my sensitive data? Am I missing something here?

all what sensitive data?

Already noticing them.

if all forms of verification are deal breakers, we either need to get laws made to make it unlawful, or we need to boycot services that require it.

The government is still going to do whatever it wants, and they already mishandle all your data.

Boycott, get around, defy, deny depose.

So what's will happen to their existing bot accounts? Erase 75% of their current users?

already happening. In a similar but different post there are already folks saying "that's why i'm here."

its kinda funny. theoretically I would love for a system that can identify real humans but realistically im unwilling to submit to the type of trump it would entail.

How about at a random interval once every couple months it will ask you to draw a picture of a cat in the browser and if it finds your drawing process too similar or the image too similar to one that's already in the database it will flag it without telling you. Three strikes and your out kinda rule. It's like drug tests but for the internet.

Even if you did, like, a line across the screen to save time there's no way in hell it'd be the same as anything else in that database unless you are extremely unlucky.

You don't consider your credit card information sensitive data?