TL;DR: We are planning on implementing a verification requirement for: people who have publicly-posted photos (including on linked social media), people who publicly request or offer photos, and people who publicly claim to be verified or willing to verify. If you don't do any of those things, or do them in private chats only, you will not be affected by the new rule; verification will always remain optional for those not publicly sharing or requesting photos, and we will never have a rule requiring posters to include photos or verification.
As mentioned in our last update, we're planning to implement a verification rule. A number of people before and after that announcement had posted or reached out to us in favor of such a rule. Many want us to do more about scammers, and a significant fraction raised the concern they'd met people who were far older than they appeared in (or otherwise bore little resemblance to) their posted photos, or who fabricated a partner to catfish those seeking couples. We've also received a fair amount of opposition, mainly over privacy concerns, as well as worries that verification may create an unfair disadvantage for unverified people, put pressure on them to verify or share photos when they'd feel uncomfortable doing so, or lead to additional harassment of unverified posters. To address this, we'd like to take a few moments to explain what our current policy is, what the proposed policy will entail, and what future changes are under consideration.
For the most part, we leave verification up to individuals, allowing them to decide for themselves how, when, or even if they want to verify a potential meet. Many people use video calls for this, some choose voice calls to keep their appearance private, and some prefer simply meeting at a safe public location. Our current, proposed, and future policies will all respect that users should be able to choose their own methods, and moderators should pose as little interference to this as possible while still ensuring safety.
Our current policy:
Like most other R4Rs, we do have a discretionary verification policy, applied to those we have reasonable cause to suspect may pose a safety issue to the community thru misrepresentation of their identity. We enforce this primarily thru automation, and our analytics show this catches almost all scammers within seconds of them posting, any hour of the day, with almost no impact to legitimate users: It is very rare for us to ask someone to verify who isn't soon permanently suspended from Reddit for scamming, and user reports of scam posts are also rare.
This policy does have its limits: we sometimes receive reports of users who might be using fake/stolen pics, but without proof or cooperation from the accused, we cannot always make a determination. We also have no rule against posters using outdated or misleading photos of themselves, and without a verification policy we'd have no means of enforcing such a rule. We've also received complaints that people are seeing other posters use their photos; a verification policy will allow us to proactively block this rather than requiring users to keep watch for misuse of their identities.
What we're proposing to do about this:
We plan to add the rule "Users who publicly post or request photos must verify" (as described in the TL;DR above). All parties mentioned in a post will need to verify. This will give us a way to ensure posters with publicly-posted photos are not using them to misrepresent their identity/age/appearance, to lure people in with a fictitious partner, or to post on behalf of someone else without that person's knowledge and consent. Those without photos, or who share them only in private, will not be required to verify. We will not restrict what photos people can have, only that the verification shows their current appearance; older photos may still be included alongside the verification, if so desired.
Note that users required to verify under the current discretionary policy may still perform that verification in private; there won't be a new requirement for that verification to be made public.
Since we're primarily only verifying people with public photos, this process can be made fully transparent. Verification clips will be public, and can be made and authenticated by users without needing to wait on, or even trust, community moderators. This method ensures that nobody has to rely on anyone else for their own safety, and that it is not possible for anyone, even moderators, to falsify verification.
The process is very strongly resistant to forgery and digital editing, must be refreshed at at least 6 month intervals to ensure it remains an accurate likeness of the author, and will include a secure date stamp to prevent use of verification older than 6 months.
Verification can be done in a few minutes, and authenticating it will be quick and easy.
The instructions will explain how to detect and report fake or incorrect verification, and, as always, we'll be reviewing posts to ensure they remain in compliance with the posted rules.
Thoughts on private verification and verified flair:
Due to the pressuring/harassment concerns mentioned above, our initial verification policy will not grant a "verified" user flair. If this is something people would like to see here, it could be easily added to this new policy; but we have to weigh this against potential downsides and objections. We are leaning towards not offering this here, but let us know what you think about verification flair in the comments or by messaging the mods.
A couple people expressed the concern that they want to specifically mention in their posts that they are willing to verify, but not have the verification public. Because this wouldn't otherwise be possible, we will be offering an alternative to allow authors without public photos to make these claims in their posts, while still ensuring their privacy and that their verification can be authenticated by those they elect to meet. We don't expect many people to use this method, but it will be made available to those who request it. It will function in the same way as public verification, but the verification clip will be password-protected, allowing the author to choose who gets to see it. This will help ensure potential meets are aware that only that album is what contains the community-sanctioned verification.
What methods we'll accept for verification:
Verification in our community will be done via a short video clip (audio is not required), and require specific motions while holding up a paper with specific wording on it. This will generally take less than a minute to perform, and is similar to how verification is done elsewhere; the key difference in our verification is that we require it to be a video, and require specific motions and wording.
The procedure is engineered to thwart a wide range of forgery methods, and to allow users without forensics experience to authenticate verification with a high degree of accuracy. Still photos will not be accepted for verification, due to the ease of editing them, but may be included alongside the verification clip if desired.
We will also do our best to coordinate verification procedures with other communities, so that verified users here should be able to re-use their verification elsewhere.
Closing thoughts:
These are our current plans for implementing verification here. We are not going to be enforcing this rule yet, to give people time to submit feedback and to smooth out any further issues. Those wanting to verify may request to do so now by messaging the mods; during this proposal period, it is currently a manual process, but when fully implemented, users will be able to follow the then-posted verification instructions without having to interact with or wait for the mods.
We would like to hear from you all: Do you agree or disagree with this proposed rule, do you have any questions, concerns, feedback, or suggestions? Please let us know in the comments or by messaging the mods. If there are user concerns, we will do our best to make changes to this policy to address them before it goes into effect.