Reddit Looks to Get in Bed With Altman’s Creepy ‘World ID’ Orbs for User Verification

Gaze into the Orb if you want your upvotes. According to a report from Semafor, Reddit is actively considering partnering with World ID, the verification system co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to perform user verification on its platform.

Per the report, Reddit’s potential partnership with World ID would allow users to verify that they are human by staring into one of World ID’s eye-scanning orbs. Once confirmed to be a real person, users would be able to continue using Reddit without revealing anything about their identity. Currently, Reddit only does verification via email, which has been insufficient to combat the litany of incoming AI-powered bots that are flooding the platform.

Gizmodo reached out to both Reddit and World ID for details of the potential partnership. Reddit declined to comment. A spokesperson for World said, “We don’t have anything to share at this time; however, we do see value in proof of human being a key part of online experiences, including social, and welcome all of the opportunities possible to discuss this technology with potential partners.”

For those unfamiliar, World is somewhere between a verification system and a crypto scheme. World ID is a method for verifying that a person is a human without requiring them to provide additional personal information—something the company calls “anonymous proof of human.” It offers several verification techniques, but the most notable is its eye-scanning Orb. The company claims that neither “verification data, nor iris photos or iris codes” are ever revealed, but going through the scan gets you a World ID, which can be used on a platform like Reddit, should it partner with World on this endeavor.

Somewhere in the backend of this whole thing is a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin, which you theoretically can use at major retailers—but like, can you really? Is anyone doing that? The founders of World, Altman and Alex Bania, launched the crypto part of the program with the intention of building an “AI-funded” universal basic income. Mostly, it’s made local governments really mad and has been at the center of legal and regulatory investigations into how it’s handling user data. It’s largely targeted developing nations for its early launches, and used some dubious practices along the way to get people to demo the system.

Also, it’s probably not technically illegal, but it does seem pretty convenient that Sam Altman offers a “solve” for a problem that his other company, OpenAI, is in no small part responsible for. Almost seems like he knew what issues he was about to cause and decided to cash in on both ends. Must be nice.