Google is about to implement a ‘age classification’ for its video platform in the United States. Users, including adolescents, will then be offered different content, regardless of the age they have mentioned.
For its system, Google will use artificial intelligence which, on the basis of viewing behavior, will determine whether the user is a teenager or not. If AI suspects that you lied to your age, it can restrict the proposed content. Anyone who is wrongly identified as a teenager will have to prove their identity to help, for example, from an official document.
The technology called ‘Age estimation’ will be deployed in the United States in the coming weeks. Teenagers have been subject to certain restrictions on the Youtube streaming platform for some time. This is how they cannot view content for adults and receive reminders in order to go to bed at a correct hour, among others. In the wider ecosystem, they will not see personalized advertisements, and their news feed on MAPs will be disabled by default. Google will also be able to block them, when they try to download adult apps in the App Store.
Age verification
Anyone unjustly considered younger will have to prove their age using an identity card or a photo. This system seems to be part of a larger trend aimed at making the Internet less anonymous, in order to protect children from inappropriate content. The changes made by Google come only a few days after the introduction by the United Kingdom of compulsory age verification for a whole series of sites, including Bluesky and Reddit. Several European countries are also planning to establish compulsory age control for Internet.
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