Meta tests age-verification features for Facebook Dating

Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley breaks down Meta's latest features on its Facebook Dating service.

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: Meta out with some news today, testing age verification features for Facebook Dating. These tools could help make the product safer to use. Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley joins us now with the details. Dan, I think the big question here is, how they're planning to do this.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, this is interesting. According to Axios, which got this information from Facebook, Meta is going to be using users' own selfie videos, as well as IDs, to try to identify them to ensure that they're of the right age to be joining a service like Facebook Dating, and to essentially keep teens out. And they say that they've done this to some success, with Instagram getting 96% of teens, or users who aren't supposed to be using the service, or preventing them from using the service, through these means.

So, yeah, it looks like this is going to be something that will be beneficial to them. But whether or not it'll help them better compete with the likes of, say, match.com or something along those lines, remains to be seen. They're still a relatively small company, as far as the dating business goes, so but a positive point in ensuring that the users are who they say they are.