Meta’s photo-sharing platform, Instagram said on Thursday to test a new age verification feature that let people in the United States verify their age on its platform. This new feature has two ways to verify people’s age: upload their ID, record a video selfie or ask mutual friends to verify their age.
- Video Selfie: You can choose to upload a video selfie to verify your age. If you choose this option, you’ll see instructions on your screen to guide you. After you take a video selfie, we share the image with Yoti, and nothing else. Yoti’s technology estimates your age based on your facial features and shares that estimate with us. Meta and Yoti then delete the image. The technology cannot recognize your identity – just your age.
- Social Vouching: This option allows you to ask mutual followers to confirm how old you are. The person vouching must be at least 18 years old, must not be vouching for anyone else at that time and will need to meet other safeguards we have in place. The three people you select to vouch for you will receive a request to confirm your age and will need to respond within three days.
Besides that, the company also partnered with Yoti, a company that specializes in online age verification, to help ensure people’s privacy.
“We require people to be at least 13 years old to sign up for Instagram. In some countries, our minimum age is higher. When we know if someone is a teen (13-17), we provide them with age-appropriate experiences like defaulting them into private accounts, preventing unwanted contact from adults they don’t know and limiting the options advertisers have to reach them with ads,” company said in their blog post.
According to the platform, people can still be able to upload their ID to verify their age with forms of identification like a driver’s license or ID card. The platform will use people’s IDs to confirm their age. The platform also said that people’s IDs will be stored securely on its servers and deleted within 30 days.
