Reddit may soon replace passwords with something straight out of science fiction: scanning your iris to prove you’re human.
Passwords have always been the internet’s messy junk drawer—forgotten, reused, leaked. But Reddit is reportedly exploring a partnership with Sam Altman’s Worldcoin, whose shiny Orb captures your iris and exchanges it for crypto and a “World ID.”
The idea sounds simple: walk up to the Orb, let it create a unique iris code (supposedly deleting the raw image), and earn verified status along with a small payout. This system promises to fight bots and spam, a goal any moderator would appreciate.
But your iris isn’t a password. You can’t replace it if it leaks. You can’t delete it from your body. And trusting a private company to hold that data safely forever is a massive leap.
Worldcoin claims the process is anonymous, storing only an encrypted hash. But the incentives reveal an unsettling reality: the project’s earliest adopters are often vulnerable communities trading privacy for small payments—not well-informed users in tech hubs.
Reddit built its reputation on anonymity, throwaway accounts, and free-ranging communities. Transforming it into a biometric verification lab feels less like innovation and more like an erosion of trust. Two-factor authentication, CAPTCHAs, and community moderation already exist. Do we really need to hand over our irises to keep bots at bay?
If this becomes the norm, the implications could spread everywhere—dating apps, streaming platforms, even household devices.
For now, Reddit is only considering this partnership. But the mere possibility should make us reflect on where our digital identity ends and our physical self begins.
Because once biometric proof becomes the price of admission, blinking won’t make it go away.
Ask ChatGPT
