Privacy technologies
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1 week agoHere's how Roblox's age checks work | TechCrunch
Roblox's mandatory facial age verification reached 45% of daily active users, revealing a younger user base and enabling age-based chat restrictions.
Following a spate of lawsuits and investigations over its child safety systems, Roblox is going to implement mandatory facial verification for all users who want to access communication features, starting in January. The platform is also introducing age-based chat, meaning users can only communicate with others in a similar age group. Starting Tuesday, users can voluntarily verify their age to secure their access to communication features.
During the sign-up process, new members complete a "liveness check" by taking a short video selfie within the app. The procedure collects and stores an encrypted map of information about the shape of the user's face. "We don't store a picture of your face, it's not photo recognition, it's data points about the shape of your face that are turned into a mathematical hash," says Yoel Roth, head of Trust and Safety for Match Group, which owns Tinder. Tinder then uses that "hash" to check whether a new sign-up matches an account that already exists on Tinder.