Spotify Is Forcing Customers to Bear Face Scanning to Entry Express Content material

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Spotify is requiring customers within the UK to confirm they’re over 18 to view "sure age restricted content material," and customers are reporting seeing a popup on Spotify to confirm their ages following the enactment of the UK's Online Safety Act final week, which compelled platforms to confirm the ages of everybody who tries to entry sure sorts of content material deemed dangerous to kids.

“You might be offered with an age test whenever you attempt to entry sure age restricted content material, like music movies tagged 18+,” Spotify says on an informational page concerning the checks. When you fail the checks, or if the age verification system can’t precisely decide your age—which includes getting your face scanned by way of your gadget’s digital camera to find out your age, or importing your license or passport if that doesn’t work—your Spotify account might be deleted.

“You can not use Spotify if you happen to don’t meet the minimal age necessities for the market you’re in. When you can't affirm you’re sufficiently old to make use of Spotify, your account might be deactivated and ultimately deleted,” Spotify says.

there is no such thing as a fucking approach. pic.twitter.com/o2L4tT8XAu

— bogus (@boogusangoos) July 29, 2025 Spotify is utilizing a third-party system for age verification known as Yoti. In 2023, when Utah began requiring age verification to entry porn websites, porn website xHamster implemented Yoti , which concerned a multi-step course of together with facial evaluation or importing a photograph of a government-issued ID.

The On-line Security Act went into effect last week . Very similar to the numerous legal guidelines in U.S. states that maintain customers from accessing porn except they add an ID or go biometric face scanning, the legislation requires websites working within the UK to implement age verification or face thousands and thousands of {dollars} in fines and jail—or as much as 10 p.c of world revenues, whichever is larger.

After publication of this story on Wednesday morning, a Spotify spokesperson emailed me to say that the headline just isn't correct.

"We aren't forcing customers to undergo our age assurance checks, these are voluntary. There are a number of ways in which customers can undergo our age assurance checks (e.g. ID verification) - not simply ‘face scanning.' These checks are usually not with a view to entry express content material, they're to entry music movies which might be labelled 18+," they wrote. All of this was already within the article because it first appeared when printed Wednesday morning, cited instantly from Spotify's personal website.

"Will you please replace your headline to mirror this?," the spokesperson mentioned. "So to really be correct, your headline might learn: 'Spotify is Providing Customers Age Assurance Know-how to Entry Music Movies Labelled 18+'"

To date, the UK legislation has resulted in folks having to confirm their ages to visit subreddits that put up information about conflict, sure Discord neighborhood, sure Bluesky content material, and extra. The UK’s Reform occasion is already vowing to repeal it, calling it “borderline dystopian.”

Additionally final week, 404 Media broke the news that within the technique of gathering selfies to try to test customers’ gender, ladies’s relationship security app Tea uncovered the private info, together with non-public messages and IDs, of 1000's of customers. Critics of age verification legal guidelines say they solely create extra censorship for adults, whereas kids and everybody else get across the checks through the use of VPNs or visiting much less protected, noncompliant websites.

Up to date 7/20/2025 at 12:32 p.m. EST with remark from Spotify, and to make clear within the first sentence that the verification is for "sure age restricted content material."

In regards to the writer

Sam Cole is writing from the far reaches of the web, about sexuality, the grownup trade, on-line tradition, and AI. She's the writer of How Intercourse Modified the Web and the Web Modified Intercourse.