In an industry-first, the Gen Z social discovery app expands audio moderation for livestreams to the UK, Australia and Canada, after launching in the U.S. this summer

Yubo, the live social discovery app for Gen Z, has expanded its audio moderation technology for livestreams across four of its largest markets: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. In partnership with Hive, Yubo introduced this technology in the United States at the end of May, becoming the first major social media platform in the world to tackle the challenges of real-time audio analysis. 

While significant strides have been made in the advancement of real-time image and video moderation technology, audio moderation has remained an unsolved challenge. Roughly half of people who have reported experiencing harassment in online gaming – where livestreaming has historically been most prevalent – were targeted by voice, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League. 

Yubo has since expanded the trial phase to include all majority-English-speaking regions where it has large user bases, reaching a critical inflection point to gather substantive insights into this breakthrough safety tool. Although still in its infancy, the technology has proven to be particularly effective at detecting potential real-world risk, such as violence to others or self-harm. 

Hive’s audio moderation technology on Yubo currently works by recording and automatically transcribing 10-second snippets of audio in livestreams of 10 or more people. The text is then instantly scanned using artificial intelligence. Only transcripts containing words or phrases that violate the app’s Community Guidelines are flagged for review by Yubo’s Safety Specialists, who begin investigating the incidents in real time to determine what actions should be taken, including whether it is necessary to escalate to law enforcement. Transcripts with no suspected violations are not reviewed nor kept. 

The algorithms that power this audio moderation technology utilize machine learning and will therefore continue to improve and become more precise with time. To protect user privacy, livestream transcripts that have not been flagged for investigation are deleted after 24 hours. Transcripts that are flagged and require investigation internally or by law enforcement are stored for up to a year. 

“Our expansion of audio moderation technology is not only a key element of Yubo’s ever-evolving safety product roadmap, but a critical development in expanding the parameters of online safety industry-wide,” said Yubo Chief Operating Officer Marc-Antoine Durand. “There is still a lot of progress to be made in the area of voice detection, but we are proud to be forging a path for our peers by being the first to launch audio moderation with Hive and helping make this tool more reliable and effective through this trial.”

Yubo first deployed audio moderation technology this summer to a small cross-section of users in the US. With greater scale across four primary markets, audio moderation keywords now trigger an average of 600 livestreams per day for review by Safety Specialists. Still, a significant share of these constitute “false positives.” False positives refer to instances where, for example, a song playing in the background or playful language containing triggering keywords are flagged for review, but are not actually instances of harmful speech. False positives highlight not just the complexity of effective online content moderation, but also the importance of combining technical tools with human oversight for nuance and context. That's why at Yubo human moderators always have the final say on what moderation action to take and continuously supervise the detection algorithms. 

Yubo scales real-time audio moderation technology across four major international markets

Robust age-verification technology enhances Gen Z platform’s existing safety tools and combats bad actors – bots or humans – seeking to breach security systems

PARIS, FRANCE – SEPT. 14, 2022 – Yubo, a live social discovery platform for Gen Z, is the first major social media app in the world to implement comprehensive age-verification for all its users, a groundbreaking milestone in a key area of concern in online safety today.

Yubo 100% Age Verification

In partnership with leading digital identity provider Yoti, Yubo first introduced this age-verification system in May for users ages 13 and 14, with the goal of scaling verification across all ages by year-end. Following the successful trial, the technology integration was accelerated, with all Apple users becoming verified three months ahead of schedule. The new age-verification technology will be fully deployed to Android users, who make up roughly 10 percent of users on Yubo, in the coming weeks.

The new system further mitigates risks of child abuse and other such acts by preventing users who might misrepresent their age for ill intent from joining the platform. Age-verification technology also strengthens age-gating on Yubo, which separates users into different communities based on age to limit interaction betweens teens and adults – a unique feature among social media platforms today.

“Our commitment to empowering Gen Z to express themselves and connect authentically online is second only to our commitment to continually advancing Yubo’s position as a leader in safety innovation,” said Yubo CEO Sacha Lazimi. “By continually applying new safety measures, such as mandatory age verification, to our platform, we are taking a clear stance that we are willing to drive away a portion of users in order to prioritize making Yubo as safe as it can possibly be."

Yubo’s new age-verification system prompts first-time users signing up for an account, or existing users who haven’t yet been verified, to take a real-time photo of their face on the app, using Yoti’s facial age estimation technology. Yoti’s technology accurately estimates age by looking at an image of a face, which is analyzed as a pattern of pixels. The technology converts the pixels to numbers and matches them to an age. Designed with privacy at its core, the system has no way of linking a face to a name. If analysis detects a discrepancy between the age provided and Yoti’s facial age estimation, additional identification steps to access Yubo are required, through an in-app process overseen by Yubo Safety Specialists in accordance with “privacy by design” principles set forth by European data privacy laws.

Yoti is able to verify that a user is above or below a given age threshold consistently across all ages, genders, and skin tones, and its technology is certified by iBeta, the gold standard for such technologies. Yoti is a trusted partner of major retail and financial services firms, business software clients, government agencies and the Post Office of the United Kingdom, where Yoti is headquartered.

“With over 60 million users, Yubo understands the immense challenge of ensuring that their community remains safe,” said Yoti CEO Robin Tombs. “By using our industry-leading age verification across their entire platform, users who want to enjoy Yubo responsibly have an easy, privacy-preserving tool to verify their age. We are proud to collaborate with Yubo to help safeguard young people and create age appropriate experiences online.”

All developments and policies on the platform are guided by the expertise of Yubo’s Safety Board, which is made up of respected thought leaders from such organizations as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), Thorn, and INTERPOL.

“Yubo has gone above and beyond to enhance the online experiences of Gen Z on its platform by proactively mitigating safety risks,” said Annie Mullins OBE, Yubo Independent Safety Advisor and former executive of Yahoo! UK and Vodafone, where she led user-protection programs and other such initiatives. “Its rapid, full-scale deployment of sophisticated age-verification technology with Yoti is just the latest evidence of its unwavering commitment to online safety innovation.”

In addition to implementing age-verification tech across its entire platform, Yubo is also the first social media platform in the world to introduce real-time audio and video moderation of livestreams, with instant intervention from human Safety Specialists when needed. In addition to Safety Specialists and the Emergency Escalation team members who support them, a range of cutting-edge technical tools also monitor activity on Yubo. 

Yubo is a live social discovery app making it easy for Gen Z to expand their social circles and hang out online with new friends from around the world. By eliminating likes and follows, we empower young people to show up as their true selves and connect as authentically as they would offline. Safety is a cornerstone of our platform, and we are proud to be the first social app in the world to introduce comprehensive user-age verification tools and real-time video and audio moderation for livestreams. Founded in France in 2015, Yubo today is used across more than 140 countries by over 60 million users. Visit us at yubo.live to learn more and follow our journey. 

Yoti is a digital identity technology company that allows organizations to verify identities and trusted credentials online and in person. Yoti’s products span identity verification, age verification, document eSigning, access management, and authentication. Over 12 million people have downloaded the free Yoti app globally. Yoti is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Polish. Yoti is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 for ID Verification Services, ISAE 3000 (SOC 2) Type 2 certified for its technical and organizational security processes. For more information please visit www.yoti.com.

Yubo, a live social discovery platform for Gen Z, is the first major social media app in the world to implement comprehensive age-verification for all its users, a groundbreaking milestone in a key area of concern in online safety today.
In partnership with leading digital identity provider Yoti, Yubo first introduced this age-verification system in May for users ages 13 and 14, with the goal of scaling verification across all ages by year-end. Following the successful trial, the technology integration was accelerated, with all Apple users becoming verified three months ahead of schedule. The new age-verification technology will be fully deployed to Android users, who make up roughly 10 percent of users on Yubo, in the coming weeks.

Yubo to become first major social media platform to age-verify 100% of its users

Yubo to become the first major social media app to institute wide age verification for all users

Cutting-edge age verification technology will safeguard the app’s 60 million Gen Z users and buildon Yubo’s existing industry-leading safety practices  

May 17, 2022 | Yubo, the social live-streaming app for Gen Z, today announces that it is implementing an industry-leading age verification feature in partnership with digital identity provider Yoti. Yubo will become the first major social media app to institute a wide age verification process across its platform to make sure its users are the age they say they are when interacting on the app. This age verification feature has launched in beta stage for users ages 13 and 14 with the goal of age-verifying 100% of all users on the platform by the end of 2022. 

London-based digital identity provider Yoti has been a trusted partner of Yubo since 2019, when Yubo became the first social media app to adopt its privacy-friendly technology to verify suspicious accounts. The partnership will now see them add another layer of age authentication to the platform as Yubo makes ID verification widely accessible within the app. 

Yoti built this technology to give people a secure way to prove how old they are in different everyday scenarios. For Yubo, it will play an important part in protecting its young users by ensuring the separation of minors and adults on the app – one of today’s top online safety challenges. Built with ‘privacy by design’ in mind, this approach will not require any personal details or documents for a user to receive their age estimate, thus their information is never seen by another person. Features of this new system include: 

Advanced age verification process: In order to make the age verification seamless and accessible to all users, Yubo’s new system will not require any identification documents unless a user’s age doesn’t match – instead users will take a real-time photo of themselves within the Yubo app, which Yoti's age estimation technology will then process. The technology will ensure users access the correct age group on the app and enable wide scalability. 

Enhanced security: After a user takes their photo, Yoti’s passive liveness algorithm analyses it to confirm the image being used is not a fake or a spoofing attempt. Users who do not have the correct age on their profiles will be asked to verify their identity through additional processes before accessing the app. 

Improved accuracy: Yoti’s technology, which is privacy-preserving, continues to grow in accuracy year on year. It is able to correctly verify that a user is above or below an age threshold, working fairly across all ages, genders, and skin tones. As a trusted identity platform, the Yoti age estimation system can effectively estimate the ages of 6 to 12-year-old users within 1.3 years and those between 13 and 19 within 1.5 years. Yoti’s proprietary liveness detection technology is certified by iBeta, the gold standard for such technologies. 

This new age verification approach is the latest in the platform’s long history of safety-driven initiatives to protect the Yubo community, including real-time AI and human moderation for live streaming, educating users on safe and responsible behaviours online, and working closely with leading safety experts:

Keeping users safe on live streams: Yubo is the first platform in the world to undertake real-time intervention in online live streaming. By using AI technology and human moderation, Yubo has created a system that maximises its ability to identify when a user is breaking the rules or putting themselves at risk. Advanced AI filters monitor each live stream by taking screenshots second by second and flagging inappropriate content to human moderators in real-time 24/7 on the app. The technology screens for nudity, partial nudity, including underwear, suggestive content, drug usage, weapons, blood and violence.

Educational safety features: Educational safety features and personalised modification options are prominent on the app through pop-ups and alerts sent to users if they are participating in harmful and inappropriate behaviours or sharing sensitive personal information. This prompts them to think twice before they share. Users are also empowered to block specific words and phrases on the app that they find upsetting by using the Muted Words feature launched last year. This gives them more control over what type of interactions they want to have and content they want to see. 

Safety Advisory Board: Yubo has created a safety advisory board made up of international online safety experts who provide invaluable advice and inform its proactive strategy to safety. Over the past three years, Yubo has worked closely  with this board, as well as governments, NGOs, and charities to evolve and innovate on Yubo’s safety strategy and  identify how else to further protect its users. 

Annie Mullins, OBE, Independent Safety Advisor at Yubo, says, “Yubo has shown relentless dedication to the safety of its users and this expanded partnership with Yoti is just one example of this. It’s critical that any company with young users proactively creates as safe and secure an environment for them as possible. I’m grateful to be a part of Yubo’s safety team as we continue to help keep young people stay safe online through industry-leading technology, partnerships and educational initiatives that show Gen Z how to behave responsibly online. At Yubo, we know online safety is always evolving, and so our teams will always strive to be ahead of the curve and innovate with new solutions.”

Robin Tombs, CEO of Yoti, says, "Yubo’s implementation of our industry-leading age estimation technology, combined with our liveness detection, is an exciting and innovative step for safeguarding young people online. Yubo was the first social media company to adopt our identity verification technology in 2019, and we are proud to see the company's continued commitment to user safety with the integration of this new approach.”

Marc-Antoine Durand, COO of Yubo, says, “At Yubo, we passionately believe in empowering Gen Z to interact safely online and giving them a place to discover and belong. Expanding on our partnership with Yoti through this identity verification technology will help us continue building on what is most important – the protection of our users. Many young people under 16 do not have any form of ID, which makes the standard identification processes difficult. With the ability to verify users’ age without ID, we can be inclusive of all our users and add another important layer to our extensive safety practices. This technology will help us take another step towards ensuring that our young users feel safe and comfortable on Yubo.”  

Anne Collier, Founder of NetFamilyNews.org & Executive Director of The Net Safety Collaborative (TNSC) says, “Yubo is a leader in youth online safety. As a member of their global safety advisory for 5 years, I have had a front-row seat in watching the app innovate for improving safety continuously. This partnership with Yoti is only one example. I love that the age assurance technology is designed to work across all ages, genders, skin tones and backgrounds. Stay tuned — there is much more goodness to come!”

Launched in 2015, Yubo is the leading platform for Gen Z to socialise online, reaching over 40 million users across 40 countries. By taking the best of offline interactions and powering them through online possibilities, Yubo is a space where young people can hang out and find out about the world and themselves. It is socially inspiring and enabling a new generation by creating a new space for youth centred around real-time, one-to-few conversations. Visit yubo.live for further information.

Yoti is a digital identity technology company that allows organisations to verify identities and trusted credentials online and in person. Yoti’s products span identity verification, age verification, document eSigning, access management, and authentication. Over 11 million people have downloaded the free Yoti app globally. Yoti is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Polish. Yoti is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 for ID Verification Services, ISAE 3000 (SOC 2) Type 2 certified for its technical and organisational security processes. For more information please visit www.yoti.com.

Yubo, the social live-streaming app for Gen Z implements an industry-leading age verification feature in partnership with Yoti. Yubo will become the first major social media app to institute a wide age verification process across its platform. Yubo’s goal is to age-verify 100% of all users on the platform by the end of 2022.

Social live-streaming platform Yubo implements industry-leading age verification system

Social Live-Streaming Platform Yubo Implements Industry-Leading Age Verification System

With so many young people in the Yubo community, their safety continues to be a priority for our whole team. Our Community Guidelines, technical tools and safety experts help to protect, support and educate our younger users 24/7. So we’re always proud to support Safer Internet Day (#SaferInternetDay and #SID2022), a global event that promotes the safe and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.

In line with the theme of this year’s Safer Internet Day on 8 February – ‘All fun and games? Exploring respect and relationships online’ – we’ve teamed up with one of our industry partners to create an in-app campaign for Yubo users in the US. 

Founded by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Thorn is a US-based NGO that builds technology to defend children and young people from sexual abuse. Its youth brand NoFiltr, launched in 2020, helps young people to navigate the challenges of the digital world. 

Our Yubo x NoFiltr campaign will be displayed in profile ‘Swipes’ and includes four crucial tips about online grooming (see below). Yubo users in the US who have any online concerns can contact our safety team directly by tapping the shield icon then ‘Report’ in the Yubo app or text NOFILTR to 741741.

“This campaign for Safer Internet Day is a great example of our proactive approach to preventing harm and helping members of the Yubo community to stay safe,” comments Annie Mullins OBE, Safety Advisor to Yubo. “We want to encourage young people to think critically when interacting with others online, help them to deal with potentially risky situations and protect themselves from harm.” 

“This includes helping them if they are being pressured into sharing personal information or images with someone they don’t know. By providing the NoFiltr advice in Swipes, we’re reaching them in their own space, using language that resonates with them, and letting them know that support is available.”

In a recent blog on the Thorn website, the company’s CEO Julie Cordua noted that “Our global systems are failing to protect children from online sexual exploitation. We need to move the ecosystem that is at the core of creating this world (tech companies, law enforcement, parents and caregivers, public apathy) from a reactive, siloed, child-isolated network to a child-centered, child-supported, globally-connected, proactive, and accountable community.”

Yubo partners with NGOs for Safer Internet Day

Our collaboration with Thorn for Safer Internet Day is part of our focus on building relationships with governments, NGOs, charities and other organisations in order to help drive improvements in digital safety and wellbeing. 

For example, we’re a member of the Tech Coalition and the ICT Coalition, and our Safety Board is made up of international industry experts, including John Shehan, Vice President of NCMEC, Mick Moran, formerly of INTERPOL, and Travis Bright, Product Director at Thorn. In recent years, we’ve also run various issues-based campaigns on the Yubo app with Childnet (UK), e-Enfance (France), Good Thinking (UK), NCMEC (US), Switchboard LGBT+ Helpline (UK), The Diana Award (UK) and many others.

And, of course, we continue to develop innovative tools that help to build a friendly, safe and inclusive community on Yubo and protect young people from online grooming, sexual exploitation, harmful content and other online concerns. These include:

Identity verification: Yubo users have to provide some personal information at sign-up, including their mobile number and a photo that clearly shows their face. We verify their mobile number and use face recognition algorithms and Google image search to check the authenticity of their profile picture.

Community Guidelines: We have strict rules to make sure that discussions between users are respectful and similar to those they would have in real life – everyone has to agree to adhere to these guidelines. Topics covered include nudity, violence, drugs, hate speech, fake profiles and bullying. 

Muted Words: This feature, which was introduced in 2021, allows Yubo users to block any word, abbreviation or emoji that they find offensive, harmful or triggering from comments or content in the app. 

Cautions about inappropriate content requests: If a Yubo user attempts to make inappropriate requests in private chat, we’ll caution them by sending a pop-up alert, and we’ll block that content from being shared.  

Real-time intervention in Lives: If we see inappropriate behaviour or content in a livestream (e.g. if someone asks for nudes), we send a pop-up alert and use the opportunity to explain how the user has crossed the line, how to change their behaviour and what further action we’ll take if they don’t comply. 

Find out more about Safer Internet Day 2022 in our recent blog. We’d also encourage you to check out the Yubo Safety Hub, where you’ll find information about our approach to safety, advice about key concerns, details of our safety tools, short guides for young people and parents, carers and educators, and a list of support organisations by country.

Safer Internet Day 2022: Yubo x NoFiltr

Cyberbullying has been on the rise among young people and has reportedly risen by 50% over the course of the lockdowns, increasing the conversations around the measures that can be taken to protect kids and teens online.

This Anti-Bullying Week (15th -21st November) Yubo is educating its user base on the impacts of bullying by working alongside UK Charity The Diana Award with the aim to make the Yubo community aware of the actions they should do when you have been bullied, through a campaign directly on the App and an educational quiz. It’s now urging other social media platforms to proactively take measures to protect younger online users as well as educate teens on how to act kindly online in order to protect them in the long term. 

Earlier this year, Yubo took action against online bullying and harmful content with the introduction of its new ‘Muted Words’ feature, which enables its users to block specific words and phrases that they find personally triggering from appearing to them on the app.

The Muted Words feature allows users to specify a number of words and abbreviations that they find offensive, harmful and triggering to them that they no longer wish to see in comments or content on the app. Users will also be able to choose from whom to mute the words - for example, they can block from all users or just those that aren’t on their friends' list. Yubo will then automatically hide comments containing these words from the user's view.

Sacha Lazimi, CEO and co-founder of Yubo says, “Social media plays a huge role in Gen Z’s lives - they are the very first digital natives, to them there is no difference between socialising online or offline. As they spend more time online, it is our job as social media organisations to protect them against online bullying and inappropriate behaviour. 

Now more than ever, this generation needs a space to safely socialise with like-minded people and experience social interaction online. However, it is our responsibility as a business to ensure that they are protected and educated on how to behave responsibly online, not just on Yubo, but on any social media or online forum. That is why we have introduced these new features and will continue to proactively work with our safety and moderation experts to ensure Yubo is a safe space to make new and meaningful connections.” 

This Anti-Bullying Week (15th -21st November) Yubo is educating its user base on the impacts of bullying by working alongside UK Charity The Diana Award with the aim to make the Yubo community aware of the actions they should do when you have been bullied, through a campaign directly on the App and an educational quiz.

Yubo collaborates with the Diana Awards

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the leading non-profit organization to find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation and prevent future victimization, is partnering with Yubo, the world’s largest social discovery platform, to ensure the safety of young people in the digital age. Yubo joins the ranks of some of the world’s most prominent tech giants, as part of its work in introducing unparalleled safety features to the platform which caters solely to a younger generation.

Starting today, the Yubo moderation team, a team solely dedicated to preventing unsafe user behavior on the platform, will be able to report suspected online child exploitation to NCMEC’s CyberTipline in real-time, at just the click of a button. When NCMEC receives a report, that information is made available to law enforcement around the world for them to review and investigate. Yubo will identify suspicious profiles by hash value matching with NCMEC’s hash sharing database, which tracks the ‘digital fingerprint’ of known images and files that contain child sexual abuse content.

NCMEC will also take on an advisory position for Yubo, counselling on the development of moderation and safety tools. John Shehan, VP of NCMEC’s Exploited Children Division, joins the Safety Board of Yubo, whose existing members include leaders from other key public and non-profit organizations like Thorn, Diana Award, ex-Interpol, the London’s mental health service Good Thinking,  and the founder of NetFamilyNews.org. John’s role with the platform emphasizes Yubo’s dedication to working transparently and positively with the most influential safety organizations across the globe, dedicated to the protection of young internet users.

John Shehan says, “We are impressed with Yubo’s commitment to the safety of their users and their innovative solutions to making a safer environment online. We’re proud to work with them to continue to develop tools that will protect young people from exploitation.”

Marc-Antoine Durand, Chief Operating Officer of Yubo adds, “User safety is the top priority for Yubo. We are one of the only social platforms that invests this heavily in human, technical and financial resources to continuously ensure that Yubo is the most secure platform for Gen Z.”

“Our partnership with NCMEC ensures that cases of exploitation are flagged instantly, allowing local authorities to have complete access to information in order to apprehend digital perpetrators in a faster and smarter way than ever before.”

The announcement of the partnership is further supported by the launch of two new safety features on the platform. The first will prevent profiles that do not feature a profile picture; a new tool requires users to upload a photo of themselves in order to access and use the app. Furthermore, a second tool created by Yubo will detect and alert the user - in real-time - when they are about to share personal information such as their location, email address or phone number, allowing them to rethink sending a message.

Introducing: True identity popups

These new features add to Yubo’s existing safety credentials, including age estimation in partnership with Yoti Age Scan, real-time moderation intervention on social videos as well as its continuous collaboration with police forces worldwide, securing the platform as the world’s leading social media destination which promotes safety as its highest priority.

Annie Mullins, co-founder of The Trust and Safety Group and an independent safety advisor says,

“It takes an army to fight against exploitation of young people. We need tech companies to work with local non-profit organizations and law enforcement to ensure that offenders face the full force of the law.”

“From educating and empowering users through built-in-app safety tools, to partnerships with important and relevant organizations like NCMEC, Yubo’s commitment to safety is commendable, and should serve as an example to other social platforms.”

With a global community of over 28 million young people on the platform, and with tens of thousands of new members joining the community each day, Yubo is committed to ensuring the safety of every person on the platform.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the leading non-profit organization to find missing children, reduce child sexual exploitation and prevent future victimization, is partnering with Yubo, the social discovery platform, to ensure the safety of young people in the digital age. Yubo joins the ranks of some of the world’s most prominent tech giants as part of its work in introducing unparalleled safety features to the platform which caters solely to a younger generation.

NCMEC partners with Yubo, to tackle online exploitation

NCMEC Partners With Yubo, to Tackle Online Exploitation

As a platform that’s all about helping young people make meaningful connections, we focus on the safety of our community every day. So, we’re always proud to support #SaferInternetDay, the annual global online safety event, which takes place today (9 February).

Over the last few years, we’ve introduced a number of industry-leading safety measures to help protect, support and educate young users on Yubo. This includes real-time intervention where we use a combination of AI algorithms and human moderators to monitor activity and take action when our Community Guidelines are broken. We don’t allow nudity on Yubo, for example – if someone breaks this rule, we send a message asking them to change their behaviour or we’ll close the livestream and/or suspend their account.

We also encourage our young users to think twice before sharing personal details in private chat. If someone types a phrase such as ‘I live in…’ or ‘My phone number is…’, this triggers a pop-up alert giving them the opportunity to delete the message or send it anyway. Today, we’re introducing a new safety feature – if any of our users attempt to make inappropriate requests in private chat, we’ll caution them by sending a pop-up alert and we’ll block that content from being shared.  

Why is it so important that we pre-empt possible risks on Yubo? During adolescence, there’s a lot of potential for young people to learn new things but the part of the brain that helps them to make decisions and consider the consequences of those decisions is not yet fully developed. At the same time, they might come under pressure from their peers to behave in a certain way and take risks.

To help combat this, we educate our young users and give them the opportunity to think carefully about sharing content or personal information and change their mind if they do have second thoughts. We support their freedom of expression but it’s also important to help keep them safer.

As our safety advisor Annie Mullins OBE says, “Young people make mistakes  – that’s part of growing up  –  but it’s important that social media providers offer safety nets for them and nudge them in the right direction when their behaviour could put them at risk. The focus should be on promoting digital resilience and wellbeing.”

If we look at the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), we see that young people have the right to privacy and the right to express their views. But they also have the right to protection from discrimination, violence, sexual abuse and other forms of exploitation. These rights apply online as well as offline, of course. In a recent blog, Professor Sonia Livingstone of the LSE described the adoption of a General Comment on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child as a “game changer”.

Striking the balance between privacy and safety is certainly one of the main challenges for tech companies and regulators. The need for privacy must be weighed up against the risk of digital crimes against young people, such as identity theft, hate speech and child sexual abuse. Here at Yubo, we ask all new users to read and accept our Community Guidelines, and we’re as transparent as possible about how we monitor and moderate content on our platform (without undermining the safeguards we have in place).

In 2020, we were part of industry efforts to introduce a harmonised regulatory approach to e-privacy in the EU (where Yubo is based). We believe that putting all the focus on user privacy might have unintended consequences and could put children at greater risk from sexual exploitation. Together with Google, Linkedin, Microsoft and Roblox, we announced that Yubo would remain “steadfast in honouring our safety commitments that European – and, indeed, users around the world – expect and rely upon.”

Our position was welcomed by many, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

NCMEC President and CEO John Clark said, “We commend Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Roblox, and Yubo which have publicly committed to continuing their proactive efforts to detect child sexual exploitation even while the EU deliberates next steps.”

“We wholeheartedly applaud the stance taken by these companies who are really going the extra mile to protect children,” commented Susie Hargreaves OBE, Chief Executive of the IWF. “Keeping children safe on, and offline, has to be everyone’s priority, and we must never lose sight of this.”

Today’s Safer Internet Day theme of ‘Together for a better internet’ reminds us of the vital role Yubo plays in the digital safety ecosystem. Working closely with other stakeholders – as a member of the Technology Coalition and supporter of Project Protect, for example – is a key part of this.

With more than 45 million users and our livestream usage increasing by 550% globally in 2020, we have a responsibility to continue educating young people about responsible and safe online behaviour. It’s a role we take very seriously, especially as digital spaces have become even more of a lifeline while they have been at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

As our COO Marc-Antoine Durand says, “Now more than ever, this generation needs a space to safely connect with like-minded people and experience social interaction online, when they are unable to do so in real life… it is our responsibility as a business to ensure that they are protected and educated on how to behave responsibly online, not just on Yubo, but on any social media or online forum.”

Visit the #SaferInternetDay website to find out how you can get involved.

Yubo is celebrating Safer Internet Day 2021 with a number of industry-leading safety measures to help protect, support and educate young users. As a platform that’s all about helping young people make meaningful connections, Yubo focus on the safety of its community every day. So, Yubo is really proud to support #SaferInternetDay, the annual global online safety event.

Safer Internet Day: Useful Links

Today, we are happy to announce an innovative partnership with digital identity company Yoti that will see Yoti’s age estimation technology YAS  (Yoti Age Scan) help protect Yubo’s community of users.

Yoti will verify the age of individuals and flag accounts where the person appears to have misstated their age; an important step in safeguarding young people on social networks. Owners of flagged accounts will be given the option to then use the free Yoti app to verify their date of birth.

Using a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) called neural network learning, YAS is a secure, anonymous age-checking service that accurately estimates a person’s age by comparing an individual’s face to many thousands of other age-verified faces. After the age is estimated,  the image is deleted.

It can be used when providing age-restricted goods and services, both online and in person. Yubo is the first social media site to use YAS to help ensure individuals can only access age-appropriate content on  Yubo. Since adopting the technology in December 2018, Yubo has conducted over 22 million age checks using YAS that would have been prohibitively expensive to do manually each day.

Marc-Antoine Durand, COO at Yubo, commented, “We’ve selected Yoti’s age estimation technology, YAS, to give us a simple,  private and secure way to make the app safe for our users; a vital step to help safeguard young people online. We are excited to develop a  partnership with Yoti and use their identity verification technology to  further enhance the safety of our platform for our users.”

Robin Tombs, CEO and Co-Founder of Yoti explained, “Our facial recognition applications are designed to make life simpler and safer for everyone. As a parent with young children, I’m delighted that  Yubo has chosen to use YAS to help with this vital step to protect young people online. YAS can estimate someone’s age with a high degree of accuracy, and Yoti gives people the chance to verify their age in a  private and secure way. Our work with Yubo shows how Yoti’s technology  can help make the internet a safer place for young people.”

Annie Mullins OBE, Safety Expert and Yubo advisor, said,  “This is an exciting and innovative step for safeguarding young people  online, which sets an example to other platforms and highlights Yubo’s commitment and leadership to proactive safety measures and protecting  young users.”

John Carr, Online Child Safety Consultant, commented,  “Regulators should take note of this new approach. Yubo is now showing how AI can be used to review if a person is in the right age band. For game sites and social media companies, there is now a new way to safeguard minors. This is a brilliant example of technology being used  to help improve online safety, one that is on a fast track towards the  mainstream.”

YAS has been designed with data privacy and security as primary considerations. YAS is a private and anonymous solution. There is no need for individuals to register in advance or provide any documents as evidence of their identity. YAS simply estimates their age. The image is instantly destroyed as soon as the age has been estimated.

As part of their ongoing safety strategy, Yubo plan to use the Yoti app to let flagged users share their verified date of birth. Individuals will also be able to verify their name so that Yubo can highlight verified users to others.

For more information about Yoti go to www.yoti.com or read the YAS white paper.

Yubo announced an innovative partnership with  digital identity company Yoti that will see Yoti’s age estimation  technology YAS  (Yoti Age Scan) help protect Yubo’s community of users.

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