news 
Reddit has begun enforcing age verification checks for its UK users as a result of complying with the new UK Online Safety Act. The platform will use a third-party company called Persona to verify the ages of its users.
In order to access mature content, users in the UK will be required to either upload a photo of their government-issued ID or take a selfie using a facial recognition technology. Once verified, Reddit will save only the user’s verification status and birthdate, eliminating the need for re-entry every time they attempt to view restricted content.
According to the announcement made by Reddit, Persona will store photos for only seven days and will not have access to any other personal information of the user, including their posts and visited subreddits. If a user is found to be under 18 years old, Reddit will hide all restricted content from them, limit ads in sensitive categories such as gambling, and restrict access to sexually explicit content, suicide-related content, disordered eating encouragement, hate speech, violence-promoting content, harmful substance encouragement, and body shaming posts.
It’s important to note that users outside of the UK will not be affected by this new policy. However, Reddit has hinted at the possibility of introducing age verification checks for other regions if similar laws are adopted in the future.
In a related development, Reddit also expressed interest in confirming whether its users are human or not, particularly with the rise of AI-powered technology. More details on this feature will be announced later by the platform.
Source: www.engadget.com
