Tinder Mandates “Face Check” for New Users in California and Canada
Tinder Mandates “Face Check” for New Users in California and Canada
New Tinder users in California must use video selfies for account verification. The update enhances security and ensures real profiles. Learn more about this important change!
New Tinder users in California are now required to submit their face biometrics via a video selfie when creating an account. For Tinder, biometrics are nothing new. Since 2020, Wonder Match Group has used real-time selfies for photo verification. Through a number of expansions, the FaceTec-powered biometric system has been implemented in the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia.
The new Face Check system, which is also a FaceTec product,
"confirms the person is real and present and whether their face matches their profile photos," and "also checks if the face is used across multiple accounts."
In contrast to the ID Check system, which verifies age and identity against a government-issued ID.
To put it another way, it prevents the creation of accounts using deepfaked identities by performing face liveness detection and scanning for matches on other accounts. Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety at Match Group, tells Axios that,
"It's really meant to be about confirming that this person is a real, live person and not a bot or a spoofed account."
According to reports, Face Check is already operational in Canada (except Quebec) and Colombia. California is regarded as the perfect test market in the United States because of its size, demographics, and strong online safety and privacy regulations, according to Roth, who calls the preliminary findings from those jurisdictions encouraging.
However, the action might be a part of a bigger effort to figure out how to stop Tinder and its group of "match" websites from losing money. Following drops in revenue and paying users, Match Group recently laid off 13% of its workforce last month. The industry is struggling as paying users search for romance or excitement elsewhere. According to Ofcom's 2024 Online Nation report, the most popular dating apps saw a nearly 16 percent decline in use between 2023 and 2024 in the UK.
AI features have been considered by the industry as a possible remedy. In addition to Tinder, Match Group also owns Match.com 🔗, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, OurTime, and other international dating brands, so it has a backup plan in place.
