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Age verification laws

In some areas we are required to follow age verification laws, as such only adults can use the service in the following locations after doing a check using Stripe to do a $0.00 credit card check to make sure the card and details are valid.

This block does not prevent people from browsing the website, viewing profiles, or seeing embeds. It does, however, prevent signing in or registration if the visiting IP is located in the following regions and the account was not verified by our process.


What is an age verification law?

Several places or regions, Australia for example, have implemented age-verification laws with the intent of banning children from social media platforms while requiring an age check. These laws have massive fines for non-compliance, and as such we are required to hold some assurance that any user account in the affected regions are adults.

Why do you need my credit card?

There are a few ways to perform age verification, and some of the most frequently used methods require a face scan and/or sending a copy of your government ID. We don't really like the idea of these methods, and we have local privacy laws in Canada that prevent us from collecting this information. Because of this, we are forced to do the age check another way.

Since only adults are allowed to hold a credit card, we can use them as our verification method. By performing a request for $0.00, we can ensure that the card and provided details are valid.

This is the best privacy-respecting age verification method we can perform. We do not store your card data, and use the provider Stripe to validate the information.

What locations are affected?

  • Region / Mississippi (USA) (State Code: MS)
  • Region / Tennessee (USA) (State Code: TN)
  • Region / Connecticut (USA) (State Code: CT)
  • Region / Texas (USA) (State Code: TX)
  • Region / Virginia (USA) (State Code: VA)
  • Country / Australia (Country Code: AU)

I have an account but I am visiting a affected location and cant login?

This is due to the location of the IP address when you are attempting to visit. The laws in many of the affected regions even require visitors to complete an age verification check or a declaration of your location.

Before traveling, we recommend setting your country and province/state inside Account Settings - Info to a valid location. We use this setting to check the location of users that are signed in prior to checking the visiting IP address.

I cant access the site and I am not in a location listed above

If you see the ban message and link to this article, it may be due to your VPN connection or mobile data IP attempting to connect from a blocked location. There is no 100% way to detect this, so we simply go based on the network provider's ASN list.

If you are not in a restricted location while using a VPN, try changing the location settings or servers in your VPN.