SOLÈNE REVENEY/« LE MONDE »
"Instantly confirm your age (...) with a selfie." This message, enforced by social media platform X throughout Europe and the United Kingdom since July, has been gradually spreading across many platforms. With online age checks rapidly becoming a fixture of the digital landscape, selfie-based age estimation has quickly emerged as the most visible form.
This technology, which has already been rolled out by some companies, including Facebook, for several years, relies on an algorithm that analyzes a person's photo to estimate their age. Today, the vast majority of adult-content websites implement age verification, and platforms such as Discord, Snap, Twitch, and Bluesky offer at least one solution based on facial analysis.
And the tool appears to be widely favored by internet users. "On average, we observe that when several options are available, 80% of adults choose face-based age estimation," Yoti, the global leader in this technology, told Le Monde. "Lots of people are very happy to use selfies," added Iain Corby, director of the Age Verification Providers Association, the main industry lobby, in a July interview. "I think people, what they want to do is access adult content, right? So their objective is to get to that content as quickly as possible."
