Tinder blocks under 18s from swiping for love
From next week, only adults will be able to find someone to hook up with.
Tinder. an app that connects people so that they can have sex, has announced that it'll ban under 18s from its service. In a statement, the firm's Rosette Pambakian told TechCrunch that the company has "the responsibility of constantly assessing our different user experiences." The user experience for 13 year olds, presumably, wasn't up to scratch because of the whole thing about using Tinder being a crime. "Consistent with this responsibility," Pambakian continued, "we have decided to discontinue service for under 18 users." From next week, all users will have to be 18 or older in order to decide if someone's worth doing a sex with on the basis of how good they look.
But age verification on the internet is hard, and Tinder is making sure that it can't be blamed for any laxity. Instead, the app will use the entirely reliable, infallible system of polling your age from your Facebook profile. It'd take something pretty exceptional to break that like, say, an enterprising teenager changing their age on the social network or creating a fresh profile altogether. No matter how ineffectual the move is, it's still a step on the road for Tinder tidying up its service. Earlier this month, CEO Sean Rad pledged that the app would offer a better experience for transgendered people looking for a connection.
