NEW HOPE, Pa., July 24, 2019 – The Meet Group,Inc. (NASDAQ: MEET), a leading provider of interactive live streaming solutions, and Yoti, a digital identity company, today announced that The Meet Group plans to trial Yoti’s innovative age verification and age estimation technologies designed to create safer communities online.
The Meet Group, with more than 15 million monthly active users, helps people to find connection and community through its social networking and dating apps. As a company committed to the protection of its users, The Meet Group devotes approximately half of its workforce to safety and moderation, and continuously reviews its safety procedures with the goal of meeting the highest standards of online safety and security.
The relationship allows Yoti to enhance The Meet Group’s strong existing safety measures, letting users verify their age with Yoti’s age estimation technology, or the free Yoti app where a date of birth is verified to a government issued photo ID. Yoti’s technology can help moderators at The Meet Group ensure that minors do not create accounts.
Geoff Cook CEO at The Meet Group commented: “A key part of helping people to create meaningful connections is to keep them safe online. We have already committed ourselves to one-tap report abuse capability, clear and frequent safety education, and proactive and transparent moderation, and now with Yoti’s age verification and estimation technologies, we look forward to being one of the few app operators in social or dating who can respond to reports of underage users quickly and accurately. By using Yoti’s age estimation technology and digital identity app, we believe we can enhance the safety of our platforms and give users a simple, private and secure way to verify their age.”
Adam Grayson, US Regional Director at Yoti explained:“I’m delighted to announce our relationship with The Meet Group, which demonstrates its ongoing commitment and leadership to proactive safety measures and the protection of its members. Yoti Age Scan can estimate someone’s age with a high degree of accuracy and privacy, and the free Yoti app gives people the chance to verify their age in a simple and secure way – creating more transparency online and helping to ensure that only those of the right age are accessing online platforms and creating accounts. Our work with The Meet Group shows how Yoti’s technology can help make the internet a safer place, which is particularly important when connecting with new people.”
Yoti’s technology is private and secure; letting individuals verify their age without sharing any other personal information. This data minimisation approach protects an individual’s privacy and identity, and provides a blueprint for safer, simpler user experiences. Yoti has been designed in such a way that individuals aren’t tracked – only the individual can access their personal data.
The Meet Group expects to trial Yoti’s technology on the MeetMe app this year.
Notes to editors
- Yoti’s age estimation technology uses a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) called neural network learning and accurately estimates a person’s age by comparing an individual’s face to many thousands of other age verified faces.
- There is no need for people to register in advance or provide any documents as evidence of their identity. It simply estimates their age.
- The image is instantly destroyed as soon as the age has been estimated, meaning the technology ‘always forgets a face’.
- You can find out more about Yoti’s age estimation technology in white paper.
- providing age restricted goods and services, both online and in person.
- Yoti have signed the Safe Face Pledge signature, which encourages companies using artificial intelligence to ensure that facial recognition technology is not misused.
- When MeetMe users verify their age using the Yoti app, they will only be asked to share an 18+ attribute to protect their privacy.
- Yoti is also working with social networking app Yubo who are using Yoti’s age estimation technology and the Yoti app to help protect their community of users, as part of their safeguarding and safety measures.
About The Meet Group
The Meet Group (NASDAQ: MEET) is a leading provider of interactive livestreaming solutions designed to meet the universal need for human connection. Our ecosystem of livestreaming apps enables users around the world to interact through one-to-many livestreaming broadcasts and text-based conversations. Our top apps, MeetMe®, LOVOO®, Skout®, Tagged® and Growlr®, deliver live interactions and meaningful connections to millions of users daily. Headquartered in New Hope, PA, we have offices in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dresden, and Berlin. The Meet Group is committed to safety. You can find a description of current safety practices here. For more information visit themeetgroup.com, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
About Yoti
Founded in 2014, Yoti is a global technology company on a mission to become the world’s trusted identity platform. Our free digital identity app, with over 4.6 million downloads, is the new, safer way to prove your age online, check out faster with age-restricted items at supermarkets and save time and money proving your identity to businesses. It brings safer connections with the people you meet online as well as enabling secure website login with your biometrics instead of remembering passwords.All personal details are secured with 256-bit encryption and Yoti promotes a data minimisation approach. For more information, visit www.yoti.com.
Media contacts
Brandyn Bissinger – bbissinger@themeetgroup.com
Rachael Trotman – rachael.trotman@yoti.com
Investor contact
Leslie Arena – larena@themeetgroup.com
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this press release made by The Meet Group, Inc. are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including whether we will trial Yoti’s technologies as expected; whether Yoti’s technologies will make our online communities safer and help our moderators ensure that minors do not create accounts; whether we will be one of the few app operators in social or dating who can respond to reports of underage users quickly and accurately; and whether we will by using Yoti’s age estimation technology and digital identity app we will enhance the safety of our platforms and give users a simple, private and secure way to verify their age. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained herein are forward-looking statements. The words “believe,” “may,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “should,” “plan,” “could,” “target,” “potential,” “project,” “outlook,” “is likely,” “expect” and similar expressions, as they relate to us, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Further information on our risk factors is contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018 filed with the SEC on March 8, 2019. Any forward-looking statement made by us herein speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law.