Meta introduces age-verification tools to check underage users on Facebook dating platform

Making the announcement, Meta’s Director of Data Governance, Erica Finkle noted that Meta was aiming to continue its work with an online age-verification company, Yoti to allow users to maintain their privacy and also, provide account holders with more options to verify their age.

Speaking further on the development, Finkle noted that the main aim of developing these tools was to make sure the right people were having the right experiences the company provided thus using age verification tools and age detection technology to stop people under the age of 18 from accessing experiences meant for adults.

“We’re really proud of the progress we’ve made – since launching our prior test on Instagram, we were able to stop 96% of the teens who attempted to edit their birthdays from under 18 to 18 or over on Instagram from doing so” Finkle stated.

Meta has since July, hinted about the use of AI to fish out culprits who lie about their ages to get access to certain experiences above their age brackets.

“When people first sign up to use our services, we ask them to enter their birth date. But people aren’t always accurate (or honest), and we’ve seen in practice that misrepresenting age is a common problem across the industry.” Meta said in a statement

In order to have access to Facebook dating, a user is given two options that would act as verification of his/her age.

The first option is taking a video selfie. Once this is done, Meta shares the image with its partner, Yoti and the AI automatically detects the user's age based on their facial features.

The second option is uploading an ID. A copy of the confirmed ID will be encrypted and stored securely, and won’t be visible on the user's Facebook profile or to other people on the app.

While this feature is just available in the US market, Meta plans to bring the age detection technology and verification tools to other countries where Facebook Dating and other experiences that require age limit accessibility is available.