Tinder is banning everyone under the age of 18 from its service

[midian182]

Tinder is one the largest and most popular dating services in the world, but unlike a lot of similar sites, it’s always allowed people as young as 13 years of age to use its mobile app. As of next week, however, Tinder is banning under 18’s

Tinder currently allows people aged 13 through to 17 to see only the profiles of other members that fall into the same 4-year age group. But the way it verifies an age is by checking a user’s Facebook account - a system that doesn’t require much effort to bypass.

The new rules will likely result in plenty of under 18’s changing their birthdate on their Facebook profiles so they can use the site, but at least they’ll be banned from Tinder if people report any suspiciously young-looking adults.

Tinder Spokesperson Rosette Pambakian said the company had been reviewing its policy since early this year. The change will probably affect less than 3 percent of Tinder’s 50 million worldwide users, or about 1.5 million teenagers.

On a platform that has facilitated over 11 billion connections, we have the responsibility of constantly assessing our different user experiences. Consistent with this responsibility, we have decided to discontinue service for under 18 users. We believe this is the best policy moving forward. This change will take effect next week.

Bringing in the new rule isn’t too surprising, especially considering Tinder’s reputation and the risk of the company being held liable should any age-of-consent laws be broken.

The news arrives after Tinder CEO Sean Rad promised last week to make the site more friendly for transgender users over the coming months.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/65158-tinder-banning-everyone-under-age-18-service.html

 

[cliffordcooley]

Welcome to the world of people thinking they need to lie about their age. None of the social media outlets have age verification methods to prove someones age. Therefor this act of banning members is BS.

 

[Levi Sterling]

that's the slippery slope fallacy.

This shouldn't be such a big deal, but the slippery slope guy is partially right. People are just going to lie and they will have to enact decent age verification.

 

[Kibaruk]

It doesn't matter how slippery slope it is, "if they lie it's their problem and not mine anymore".

They don't care about that, they only care about not being held responsible.

Bringing in the new rule isn’t too surprising, especially considering Tinder’s reputation and the risk of the company being held liable should any age-of-consent laws be broken.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Well, as it's a visual medium, and it relies on it's user base, a lot of "liars" can be caught simply by viewing their photos... age discrimination is already a foolhardy proposition online, but at least the obvious ones can still be caught...

 

[AnonymousSurfer]

This is going to mess things up. Those who are on the border of 18 in the age range will now have a whole bunch of under-age teens to look out for when trying to hook up. IMO this will only cause more problems with minors hooking up with young adults

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I would never have thought stupid sites like these would ever make any money let alone be popular. I guess it's true that "one is born every minute".

 

[Capaill]

Maybe they're preparing to release an alternative app. Teender?

 

[wastedkill]

They should do it minimum age of 16...