A few weeks ago, researchers affiliated with the University of Zurich quietly ran an undisclosed experiment on Reddit’s r/ChangeMyView subreddit.
Over several months, they posted more than a thousand AI-generated comments in which they impersonated real users, invented personal backstories, and even shared fabricated experiences like sexual trauma. Their goal? To study whether persuasive, personalized interventions by AI could influence users‘ opinions in online discussions (SRF News).
But none of this was disclosed to users or moderators. There was no informed consent and zero transparency.
When news of the secret study broke, the backlash was immediate and justified – putting the University of Zurich in the international spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
But the breach wasn’t just about one study. It exposed something deeper, namely our growing inability to tell who – or often: what – we’re interacting with online.
So now, there is a push is for solutions. Because: who wouldn’t want to prevent such behaviour? But what kind of solutions are we looking at? Who is offering them? And at what cost?
Enter Sam Altman, of all people. Or rather Sam Altman’s Orb, which is a biometric device the size of a bowling ball that scans your iris. But not without a reward:
- it promises proof of personhood
- it gives you… crypto!
Yes, you read that right: The Orb combines biometric surveillance and cryptocurrencies, in the form of Worldcoin, a token that has lost 90% of its value after a euphoric peak in 2024. It turns out that speculative currency backed by eyeball scans doesn’t make for a stable business model. Or not yet. Making the Orb and with it Worldcoin a feature of Reddit looks like a great way to change that. Great for Sam Altman.
Let’s be clear: The real asset in this setting is not the coin. It is your identity.
The Orb is now being pitched as the answer to AI manipulation, bot swarms, and identity fraud – all of which ironically are to a large extent the result of the kind of “innovation”, which Sam Altman helped unleash. And Reddit, the platform targeted in the Zurich study, is now in talks to integrate this system.
Even if the crypto payout is not (yet) at the center of the Reddit integration, the system behind it doesn’t change. The Orb wasn’t designed just to verify identity but to lure people into a system that rewards biometric submission with digital tokens.
And it’s irreversible: Once you’ve looked into the Orb, you can’t unlook. Your iris is scanned and converted into a code that’s encrypted and split across multiple servers. You’re told it’s anonymized. But the system can recognize you forever. Even if you delete your data, you can’t delete that. And you can’t change your iris like you change a password.
If Reddit embraces the Orb, it means we are normalizing a model where you pay with your identity to enter; and this happens in a system entirely in the hands of private actors with financial interests in rapid growth, large scale adoption and control. Let’s be clear: this is infrastructure built by those who helped created the problem, and now want to profit from it.
It’s hard to believe that a moral lapse by individual researchers could open the floodgates to a sweeping, corporate-led infrastructure for identity control.
A breach of trust enabled by AI now becomes the justification for surveillance-based trust systems. And the very people who helped break the system are offering to fix it – in exchange for your iris. That’s not a safety feature. That’s a business model.