A deceptive AI-powered experiment on Reddit’s popular r/changemyview subreddit has recently come to light, revealing a disturbing attempt to manipulate users through disguised bots.
From late 2024 until early 2025, researchers from the University of Zurich secretly utilised large language models to impersonate human users, influencing opinions without users' consent and racking up thousands of upvotes.
The experiment had seen bots posting over 1,700 comments under the guise of various sensitive personas, including trauma survivors and political extremists.
To address this issue, Reddit announced plans to tighten its user verification system in a bid to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, Ben Lee, made an official response and condemned the experiment as “deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level.”
Lee wrote in a community post,
“It violates academic research and human rights norms, and is prohibited by Reddit’s user agreement and rules, in addition to the subreddit rules.”
He also assured that all associated accounts had been banned and any related AI-generated content had been removed.
“We have banned all accounts associated with the University of Zurich research effort. Additionally, while we were able to detect many of these fake accounts, we will continue to strengthen our inauthentic content detection capabilities, and we have been in touch with the moderation team to ensure we’ve removed any AI-generated content associated with this research.”
Source: Reddit
Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, stated that maintaining the integrity of the platform was paramount.
In an update posted four days ago, Huffman wrote,
"Reddit works because it’s human. It’s one of the few places online where real people share real opinions. That authenticity is what gives Reddit its value.”
Emphasising that trust and genuine human interactions are the foundation of the platform, he further stated,
“If we lose trust in that, we lose what makes Reddit…Reddit.”
Source: Reddit
To prevent similar incidents, Reddit is now working on implementing more robust measures for verifying users, though Huffman assured the platform's loyal user base that privacy would not be compromised.
Huffman explained,
"To keep Reddit human and to meet evolving regulatory requirements, we are going to need a little more information."
He clarified that Reddit would only verify whether users are human and, in some regions, whether they are adults, but would not collect personal details like names.
Source: Reddit
The company plans to partner with third-party verification services to implement these checks.
However, questions remain about how these changes might impact the platform's core principle of anonymity.
Reddit has long prided itself on providing a space for users to share thoughts without revealing their identities, but the recent incident has forced the company to reconsider its approach.
The experiment raises critical ethical concerns, particularly around user consent.
By using AI bots to engage users in sensitive discussions—without informing them that they were interacting with machines—the researchers breached both Reddit's user agreement and established research ethics.
The moderators of r/changemyview were quick to file a complaint with the university's ethics commission, but despite the backlash, the publication of the researchers' findings is still going ahead.
The AI bots were remarkably effective, collecting over 20,000 upvotes and 137 "deltas"—awards given for successfully changing someone's opinion.
Yet, their success only came to light after the researchers revealed their actions, prompting Reddit to fast-track measures to verify user identity and safeguard against further AI manipulation.
This incident is part of the growing challenge of distinguishing between human-generated and AI-generated content.
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, platforms like Reddit face increasing pressure to balance privacy with the need to prevent exploitation.
With bots becoming more sophisticated, it is clear that online communities are at risk of becoming breeding grounds for manipulation if unchecked.
Reddit’s decision to ramp up verification processes comes with the promise that it will not compromise user anonymity.
Huffman reassured users, stating,
"We will do our best to preserve both the humanness and anonymity of Reddit."
Despite this, the lack of clarity around third-party services and the circumstances under which verification would be required has raised concerns among some users, who fear it could erode Reddit's core value of privacy.
The debate over user verification and the ethical implications of AI-driven manipulation marks a critical moment for online communities.
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