Twitter announced this week that it has rolled out a new age-verification system to check the legality of those who want to follow alcohol brands on the social network.
“One of the biggest challenges for alcohol brands is how they connect with an age-appropriate audience,” says Twitter Product Manager Tarun Jain on the company’s official blog. “To address this on Twitter, we’re rolling out an improvement to the age-screening experience on Twitter.com, iOS, and Android devices.”
Before you can follow a brand such as beer company, Twitter will now request you supply your birthday. So long as you’re of legal age in your country, the follow request will be successful. If not, the website will reject the follow attempt, explaining that you “do not meet the minimum age requirements.”
For now, age verification is only required for alcohol brands like Bud Light, Jim Beam, Knob Creek, Heineken and Bacardi. Soon, however, Twitter might allow this age-verification system for other controversial content like pornography. The system is pretty easy to get around, of course, but it is at least better than nothing.
