Reddit introduces new rules considering age verifications for community members from the United Kingdom.
Since July 14, the platform will start collecting and verifying the UK users’ ages before they can view certain mature content. As stated in Reddit’s announcement, the new procedure will not affect the community members’ privacy.
The verification will be performed in partnership with a third-party provider, Persona, and will be based on an uploaded selfie or a photo of a government ID. Persona will store the photo for no longer than 7 days. Reddit will not have access to the uploaded images and will only retain the verification status and the birthdate. Thus, the users will not have to re-enter each time.
The new rules are triggered by the UK Online Safety Act, which has new requirements to introduce extra measures to prevent children from accessing age-inappropriate content.
As for users from other countries, Reddit offers an option to provide their birthdate to help ensure that content and advertisements correspond to age. This regulation is optional, and the birthdate will not be visible to other users or advertisers.
Recently, the modding hub Nexus Mods introduced an age requirement for users in the United Kingdom and the EU, and Discord added a trial procedure for the age confirmation in the UK and Australia.
