Reddit Bans University of Zurich, Issues Legal Demands Over 'Unethical' Research

Reddit has banned University of Zurich accounts and issued legal demands after discovering that researchers engaged in a “highly unethical experiment.”

The researchers were evidently trying to determine “how AI could be used to change views.” Unfortunately for the researchers, such research is against Reddit’s terms of service.

CMV rules do not allow the use of undisclosed AI generated content or bots on our sub. The researchers did not contact us ahead of the study and if they had, we would have declined. We have requested an apology from the researchers and asked that this research not be published, among other complaints. As discussed below, our concerns have not been substantively addressed by the University of Zurich or the researchers.

CMV mods have already notified users of the various ways their discussions may have been influenced, while also disputing the researchers’ justification that the study was necessary.

The researchers argue that psychological manipulation of OPs on this sub is justified because the lack of existing field experiments constitutes an unacceptable gap in the body of knowledge. However, If OpenAI can create a more ethical research design when doing this, these researchers should be expected to do the same. Psychological manipulation risks posed by LLMs is an extensively studied topic. It is not necessary to experiment on non-consenting human subjects.

AI was used to target OPs in personal ways that they did not sign up for, compiling as much data on identifying features as possible by scrubbing the Reddit platform. Here is an excerpt from the draft conclusions of the research.

CMV mods are also trying to prevent the researchers from publishing their findings, saying it will only lead to other groups conducting similarly unauthorized studies.

Allowing publication would dramatically encourage further intrusion by researchers, contributing to increased community vulnerability to future non-consensual human subjects experimentation. Researchers should have a disincentive to violating communities in this way, and non-publication of findings is a reasonable consequence. We find the researchers’ disregard for future community harm caused by publication offensive.

Ben Lee, Reddit’s Chief Legal Officer, says the company is issuing legal demands against the researchers.

Hey folks, this is u/traceroo, Chief Legal Officer of Reddit. I just wanted to thank the mod team for sharing their discovery and the details regarding this improper and highly unethical experiment. The moderators did not know about this work ahead of time, and neither did we.

What this University of Zurich team did is deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level. It violates academic research and human rights norms, and is prohibited by Reddit’s user agreement and rules, in addition to the subreddit rules. 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.

We are in the process of reaching out to the University of Zurich and this particular research team with formal legal demands. We want to do everything we can to support the community and ensure that the researchers are held accountable for their misdeeds here.

Reddit has aggressively worked to protect its content from unauthorized AI abuse, inking a deal with Google for exclusive rights to the platform’s content. While the Zurich researchers didn’t necessary train AI off of Reddit’s content, they nonetheless abused the platform to further study AI, subjecting users to an experiment they were unaware of.

Hopefully Reddit is able to take steps to protect users from unwanted AI manipulation.