Now, it appears Meta is using its Quest VR store to demonstrate how it thinks devices with app stores should approach online age verification.
Since it’s easy to lie about someone’s age when entering only a birthdate, Meta says it’ll require people who accidentally enter a wrong birthdate to verify with an ID or credit card.
Meta has previously told developers that, starting in March 2024, it will require them to identify their app’s intended age group (preteens, teens or adults).
It also announced the launch of its user age group APIs, which officially launched last month.
Meta first added parental supervision tools to its VR headset in 2022.
Your cut out & keep guide to Big Tech talking points in a new age of antitrust With regulatory risk soaring, platforms are in lobbying overdrive.
We cut to the chase with a no-nonsense glossary of Big Tech’s top whines…As the likes of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok face unprecedented (yes, actually!)
But there’s an even greater nightmare for Big Tech: The break-up of established empires may be on the cards.
This may explain why some of the defensive claims put out in response to dialled-up regulatory attention are so familiar.
“why am I seeing this ad?”because we tracked you“why are we doing this?”to keep tracking you for 🤑“publicly available information”stuff we stole
Texas residents can no longer access Pornhub — without a VPN.
As of Thursday, when people in Texas try to access any of the porn sites owned by Aylo, formerly MindGeek, they’ll instead see a long message in opposition to age verification laws.
Laws requiring age verification on adult entertainment sites have already gone into effect in states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Utah, Montana and North Carolina.
“Since age verification software requires users to hand over extremely sensitive information, it opens the door for the risk of data breaches,” Pornhub wrote on its blog.
At first, Pornhub complied with age verification via the state-run LA Wallet app, which connects to a Louisiana resident’s ID.
Doing so while complying with the growing number of child safety laws and regulations around the world is an almost insurmountable task.
Historically, game developers may have had to verify the child’s age or request ID to prove the player is not a kid.
But with k-ID, they could instead customize the game experience to be legally appropriate for a player of that age in that particular market.
Simply knowing this answer can help the game developer customize the experience for the child, teen or adult appropriately.
k-ID’s solution entered into early access in November 2023 with a handful of game publishers across platforms in markets including the U.S., Europe, Japan, Korea, and China.
We’ve been hearing about the notion of customer experience forever, the idea that we could improve customer interactions with brands digitally.
Whether or not that’s true, the two founders fundamentally see AI agents as a new technology category, providing an entirely new way for customers to interact with brands to improve their overall experience.
Regardless, Taylor and Bavor recognize that there are some serious challenges and risks when it comes to humans interacting with these AI agents.
I think with AI we finally have technology that isn’t just making us more productive but actually doing the job.
Sierra clearly sees a big opportunity to transform customer experience with AI, but many obstacles stand in the way of success.
The state of Iowa is suing TikTok, alleging that the social media company misleads parents about the kinds of content available to young users.
The lawsuit from Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird accuses TikTok of hosting “sexual content, drugs, alcohol, intense profanity, self-harm messages, and other X-rated content,” making videos that aren’t age appropriate easily accessible for children and teens in the state.
“TikTok represents to Iowa parents and Iowa children that inappropriate content on its platform, including drugs, nudity, alcohol, and profanity, is ‘infrequent,'” the lawsuit states, slamming those claims as “lies.”The state specifically takes issue with TikTok’s age rating in app marketplaces.
Providing age ratings for social apps that surface endless waves of niche algorithmic user-generated content has always been more of an art than a science, but Iowa argues that TikTok intentionally misrepresents itself to parents.
Iowa is the latest state to sue the app over concerns around the content it serves to underage users, joining Indiana, Arkansas and Utah.
Age tech at CES was much more than gadgetsWelcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter.
There was a lot going on in tech this week, and not just CES.
But yes, CES was definitely worth watching closely, if only just for the rise of age tech.
— AnnaBetter agingFollowing CES from a distance this year, I couldn’t help but notice how age tech, or silver tech, companies seemed to be in the spotlight — perhaps more than we expected.
For instance, I read that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had visited the booth of AgeTech Collaborative, an initiative from U.S. senior advocacy group AARP to showcase “groundbreaking age tech innovations” during the event.
Pornhub’s parent company Aylo Holdings will pay $1.8 million to the U.S. government to resolve a charge of profiting off of sex trafficking.
In the worst cases, this can mean that victims of sex trafficking are portrayed in these adult videos against their will, or even without their knowledge.
By 2019, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of California indicted GDP for sex trafficking, among other charges.
But it wasn’t until several months after GDP was found guilty of sex trafficking that the network’s videos were removed from Pornhub and other Aylo sites.
Among other safety measures, the act requires platforms to comply with certain child protection provisions.
Back in April, the EU announced an initial list of 17 so called very large online platforms (VLOPs) and two very large online search engines (VLOSE) designated under the DSA.
The addition of the three platforms designated today changes that.
age verification, not self declaration) prior to accessing content — but that could be set to change in the region as a result of the trio being designated VLOPs.
Today we designate 3 additional very large online platforms.
Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos meet the user thresholds to fall under stricter #DSA obligations.
Instagram has been testing its age verification tools on the social media app in more countries, including Canada and Mexico. When users try to edit their date of birth under…
