Age Verification Comes to Twitter

July 13, 2012 in Consumer marketing with 4 Comments

It is a common occurrence to be barred from entering a wine related website until you have confirmed your birthdate, or at least confirmed you are of legal drinking age in your country.

On Facebook it is already possible to stop under-age members from seeing certain content.

However, until now this could not be done on Twitter and the only way to conform to the letter of the law in certain countries, was to post ineffective notes on your profile such as “By following you confirm you’re of legal drinking age”, or worse, annoy real and legal followers with messages threatening to block them if they did not confirm their ages (as was explored here in November after an experience with Beaulieu Vineyards)

Twitter, in partnership with BuddyMedia (a social marketing suite of tools for large brands), have now launched and integrated an age verification service as part of the Twitter experience. From today brands can sign up to for Age Verification via https://age.twitter.com/ which will enforce rules that they describe as “consistent with standard industry practices”.

Expect to be sent a Direct Message (DM) if you decide to follow a wine brand that will direct you to a site where you will have to enter your date of birth before being approved. If you happen to fail it (because you are underage, under-attentive or under the influence) you will be forever blocked by that account. However, assuming you do pass, the good news is that you will not have to go through the process again for other Age Verified accounts. [more details from The Next Web]

What is not clear what happens if you make a mistake and need to correct the age associated with your twitter account.

These “standard industry practices” may be completely ineffective, and misguided, but until law-makers see sense this is here to stay and expect this to spread quite quickly amongst the brands owned by large multinational drinks companies keen to prove their ‘Responsibility’ credentials.

It will also probably not be long until the age verification process includes some external auditing and confirmation (from Facebook, or other online resources) which will increase its accuracy but raise many privacy issues.

Why not consider creating an alternative age verification system - it may be more likely to be effective.

Oh, and for the record, if you are under 18 in the UK, or 21 in the USA, you should not have read any of this in case you should be encouraged to drink excessively simply through discovering that alcohol brands exist.

Please drink and market responsibly!

About Robert: Robert McIntosh is a wine blogger and online communicator on WineConversation.com, a prolific twitterer (@thirstforwine) and an occasional contributor to wine magazines as well as speaking at wine events. Robert is co-organiser of the annual European Wine Bloggers Conference and Born Digital Wine Awards, promotes international online wine communication, and advises companies about how to engage through social media. Robert also has some trouble communicating in the third person.

All Posts by Robert | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Share By Email

http://twitter.com/richardross Richard Ross

I don’t really see the point of this for Twitter accounts. As an open platform, anyone can read anyone else’s tweets, unless they are protected accounts. Drinks brands are unlikely to hide behind protected accounts – why would you? But any curious 17-year old can continue to follow the musings of SkinnyGirl cocktails whether they are following that account or not.
- http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine
  
  Good point – following is only one way to read the material, but I suppose it then assumes that the brand has more direct contact with these people and therefore has additional responsibilities towards them … and the law applies.
  
  I think you are right however, if you take this sort of approach to the next logical step, alcohol brands that support and require age verification SHOULD protect their accounts so that they can only be read by verified ‘adults’
  - http://twitter.com/WineCharlatan Steve Hatcher
    
    I’d like to see if these silly laws would actually stand up in court. What difference is following and reading messages from a winery via Twitter than watching a tv show or reading a newspaper article that happens to be about a certain wine or winery? Or reading this wine blog for that matter?
    
    Age verification on winery websites is mind boglingly stupid. If I were a winery in a jurisdiction that required such idiocy I would be asking legal council (that knows the internet) if I could get away with hosting my website in another jurisdiction that does not require it. Failing that I’d seriously consider creating a separate corporate entity, with a physical address in a non-age limit verification jurisdiction. I don’t know if any of those ideas would work but I’d hunt high and low for any way around
    
    Even stupider though, I’ve seen wineries from jurisdictions that don’t have these lame age limits for websites include an entrance page that requires age verification. I actually presume they just hired a daft web designer who thought it should be there because all the other ones they looked at to copy some ideas had age verification.
    
    When I encounter a “please confirm your age” on a winery website I either hit the back button and say f*** it (if i’m not that vested or curious about that winery) or I quickly pick some random date I know is at least old enough. 1982, 1947, pfffft, whatever, old enough. Now let me in, damn it.
    
    By the way, did I get across the point that I’m in the camp that thinks these ‘ “standard industry practices” ARE completely ineffective, and misguided’
http://thirstforwine.co.uk thirstforwine

I would love to see the data from a site that requires you to “enter your birthdate to view”. I wonder how many 100+ year old readers they get. Can anyone oblige?