Meta responsible for Facebook has announced that age verification will soon be added to the popular social networking platform. The image, and more specifically the user's face, will help. This option is to protect young account holders from using options reserved for adults.
Dating is not for kids
You can shine your face in many situations - for example, when unlocking a smartphone or when setting up an account with an online service intended for adults. It is this second example that refers to Meta's new idea. The idea is to prevent young users from using the Facebook Dating service available in the Facebook application on mobile devices.
Facebook intends to verify the age of those users who are suspected of being of legal age. There will be two options - one assumes a rather traditional form of verification, which is sending a scan of your ID card. The second will use artificial intelligence and facial analysis technology. It turns out that our faces are able to say much more than we thought.
The algorithm will determine the age
If you want to verify your face, you will need to record a short video of your face. This, in turn, will be made available by Meta to the external company Yoti, specializing in digital identity, identification, and the use of modern tools, such as artificial intelligence for examining facial "signals".
In principle, the same solution was implemented by Meta a little earlier in the case of Instagram. The age limit for users came into force on the platform, but it did not decide about the possibility of creating an account, but about the availability of certain functions. In this case, face recordings as well they went to Yoti.
Interestingly, the analysis carried out by Yoti with the help of artificial intelligence was not without errors. As reports show, the technology is not very good at analyzing women's faces, and it also has a lot of problems with people with darker complexions.
Facebook vs minors
Both options, i.e. verification by means of proof and by video recording, are necessary from Meta's point of view for the proper operation of the Facebook Data application. This one has not gained much popularity so far, but the potential behind it cannot be hidden - after all, there is no shortage of users on Facebook.
Sending a scan of your ID can be very controversial, but such a policy is used in many places and Facebook or Instagram are not unique in this case. It is enough to mention, for example, companies offering bookmakers, companies offering financial services (e.g. Revolut) or cryptocurrency exchanges.
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