Instagram Now Requires Birth-dates For Sign-ups

[engine]

After much controversy over content, Instagram is now requiring new sign-ups to provide birth-dates, it says, to help make the service safer.

It'll also give better controls about who can send messages to a user, with the user having greater control.

[instagram-press.com...]

[topr8]

erm, how will this help ... if you are under 13 you cannot join ... so i imagine lots of 13+ year olds will join!

[tangor]

Heh heh! Who is going to vet the age? And how? Honor system? Yeah, right! :)

[engine]

The other thing is kids lie about their ages so that they can be "involved"

how will this help

I suspect they are honing the marketing to closer reflect ages. If done correctly, a 13-y/o won't see an ad a 17-y/o might see, etc.

[NickMNS]

Heh heh! Who is going to vet the age? And how? Honor system? Yeah, right! :)

This isn't about vetting, or checking this isn't even about protecting children. This is about protecting Facebook from liabilities related to illegal activities such as marketing to and selling data of minors. Facebook forced the user to provide their age, what more can reasonably be expected of Facebook. They did their due diligence.... >> >> Fast forward to some point in the future... Mr Zuck in front of congress says "I'm sorry, we did all that we can, we will try to do better"

[RhinoFish]

When they get hacked, they'll now unleash our birth date.

I'll be giving them fake data. :-)

[tangor]

Date fudging also goes the other way ... 50 year olds registered as 12...