Reddit will verify known users with its own Official label

Reddit will verify known users with its own label. The Official label is applied to accounts of, for example, companies or artists, who often used Reddit for promotional purposes in the past.

Reddit first starts with a test with such a label. A label with ‘Official’ will then appear behind an account name in the official app and on the website. This is displayed on Reddit as a flair, and is therefore also included in posts and comments.

For the time being, this is a test with ‘a small group of profiles from organizations with which we already have an existing relationship’, says Reddit. That’s less than a hundred. Reddit is also working with a group of moderators to see how they receive the label. It is unknown how users are authenticated.

Reddit says it wants to build authenticity for well-known users with the label. The label is similar to how many other social media outlets verify famous people. Twitter used to do this with the blue check mark, before it was replaced by the paid Blue subscription. Facebook and Instagram do the same. A verification label applies to accounts that do not want to be impersonated. These are, for example, well-known people, companies or individuals with a certain reputation, such as journalists.

A few years ago, Reddit was known as a platform that was good for promotional purposes, for example for films. Leading characters then did an Ask Me Anything on the platform. Interest in it declined starting in 2015, mainly due to an outcry on the /r/IAmA subreddit when a popular employee was fired. In recent years, more and more large and high-profile UMAs have appeared on the platform. The Official label can be seen as an attempt to make the platform more attractive to famous people again.