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Tinder Bans Most Teens (gizmodo.com) 132

Tinder says it will stop allowing users aged 13 to 17 to use its app starting next week. The dating app has allowed users in the aforementioned age range to match within their age group since 2012. Gizmodo reports: The change makes sense given Tinder's status as a hookup app, its features that make it easier to find orgies, and various age-of-consent laws that could potentially land the company in hot water if anything involving a minor goes wrong. It likely won't be too hard to get around the restriction, and might just involve changing your birthday on Facebook.
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Tinder Bans Most Teens

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  • Great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09, 2016 @12:27PM (#52282363)

    Now all the 13 year olds will be on there claiming to be 19.

    • "I swear, officer, she said she was 19" will get a lot more credible now even for people who're caught with a girl that has no tits...

      • "I swear, officer, she said she was 19" will get a lot more credible now even for people who're caught with a girl that has no tits...

        Clearly you have not seen a lot of nude 13 year old chicks...

        • Re: Great (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Okay mister I'm pretty sure posts like that get you on some kind of list. Or at least I hope they do.

        • Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)

          by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday June 09, 2016 @01:01PM (#52282617) Homepage Journal

          Clearly you have not seen a lot of nude 13 year old chicks...

          And neither should you.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by axewolf ( 4512747 )

            There's nothing wrong with nudity you brainwashed little nerd. Unlike you, not everyone is conditioned to blow their load at the sight of a nude woman, so not everyone is afraid of developing some kind of preternatural affection toward immature girls by happening to see one without clothes on.
            God I hate that people like you have kids. Neurosis may be common (and thereby justifiable to weak-minded fools like you) but it is not good.

          • by M1m3R ( 1854 )

            if/when some of these "kids" have their own 13y/o daughters, they will think differently.

            funny how we old people have clear lines about nudity and age.

            • Re:Great (Score:5, Insightful)

              by St.Creed ( 853824 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @03:05PM (#52283513)

              Why? Shouldn't I take them to the sauna? I'm sure Finland will disagree. Shouldn't we go to the "natural" camping where nudity is normal and standard? Germany and large parts of the Dutch population would disagree. Why should I saddle my daughters with nudity taboos they have little use for, other than to be aware of where they are and how to respond to the neurotic ideas of the people around them?

          • Unless they are a doctor?

        • Clearly you have not seen a lot of nude 13 year old chicks...

          I believe Chris Hanson would like a word with you...

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Or 20-something asian women.

        • The better question is: Where exactly have you? Outside of Nude beaches that tends to lead to much swickly illegal things.

          • Or unless the poster is a doctor...

            • The only doctors that would be seeing naked 13 yr olds would be gynos.

              • Really, you've never had an annual physical? I'm a man and not only does it involve nudity, it involves gloved contact with genitals. I don't know that women get a hernia check or whatever coughing reveals, but I'm betting it still involves a bodily examination.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        HA! With all the GMOs and growth hormones in those McDonalds burgers, girls are getting tits when they're 8! By the time she's 19, she will look 35.

      • Or just use Roman Polanski's excuse: she was willing and able

  • Why was Tinder allowing 13 year olds to access their Creepy People Database anyway? I mean, Iâ(TM)ve seen some pretty hot teens that make my wiener twitch a bit, but, uh, no. Just no.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Because COPPA does not apply once you turn 13. Advertising makes me sick.

  • From the verbiage in the /. article, ages zero (0) to twelve (12) are, of course, more than welcome on the site.
    • The verbiage also claims Tinder has special features to help find orgies. ... like what? Last I heard it was swipe left, swipe right, you matched, hook up. Is there a setting for "Find sex parties"?

      • A couple friends of mine use it, and hearing the updates makes for interesting small talk.

        Apparently there are now some kind of "group" function, whereby you create temporary groups. These groups can then match against other groups to have chat room type conversations. ... so maybe that leads to orgies?

        I thought it would be so people can meet up in groups because "safety in numbers" type thing.

        • Tinder groups? That's not a Kik thing? There's all kinds of ads on Craigslist about Kik swingers groups; it became a media phenomena among the self-described tabloid news (as opposed to the self-denying tabloid news that permeates American culture) after they got bored with furries and online cybersex mucks (Wired...).
  • by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @12:57PM (#52282589) Homepage

    I want to know who at Tinder thought it was a good idea to allow that age range any access at all in the first place. I know why they thought it was, but I can't imagine the idea ever ending well no matter what restrictions were placed on it (at least as far as the law's concerned anyway, I'm sure the kids thought it was a dandy idea but they don't get a say in that).

    • The audience of gawker and tinder are probably the same so as long as the person was over the age of 4 that is perfectly acceptable.
    • Why? Is it suddenly illegal when it when you replace passing a note with a swipe? Since when is a 3rd party responsible for where people stick their penises?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Since when is since when there was a third party.

        If you include an adult in between in the note-passing, who knows the respective ages and the content of the note, then you have yourself an analogy.

        • Do they know the content of the note?

      • Who are these people with multiple penises? What do they do with the second penis? Is it beside or above below?

  • It was selected for mass popularity.

    It's part of the trend of the "tenderizing" industry: businesses that create products that compromise people emotionally and cause them to be distracted.
    It's good for the economy under the current system as a whole. But it's awful for the people.

    This is literally the same as the case of tobacco companies marketing to children.

    But the problem was never the tobacco companies themselves, just like the problem isn't Tinder now.
    It's that the leaders of our society are the kind

    • I guess you've got a lot of free time since timecube.com shut down?
    • It is technically impossible for something to be good for the economy as a whole but bad for the people.

      In the short term, that which is good for the economy as a whole increases consumer spending power and creates jobs. Jobs are necessary for production of goods, and thus are created by demand for more goods. Any sustainable practice of economy which improves this flow of consumer buying power improves the lives of the people.

      In the long term, the sustained strength of an economy as such reduces busin

      • analysis is highly-complex and difficult

        that is why you have instincts, and that is why you are conditioned to shun your instincts by society

        • My instincts tell me the world is flat and the sun orbits the earth. You make the ridiculous argument that the moon orbits the earth, but the earth orbits the sun; how can that be true when they both cross the sky?

          • your instincts tell you no such thing.

            the multiple levels of stupid in the implication in your statement is inexcusable

            stop believing revisionist history. stop being so fucking gullible. Look up the history of the idea of the flat world, just for starters.
            Then put these things in perspective: in various civilizations, some of the very few artifacts that survived imply that the people who used them believed something.
            The truth is the vast majority of people were not invested in believing any such thing, and

            • I know the history of the idea of a flat earth; round earth is an extremely old concept, speculated upon in 600BC, but not really accepted as a physical fact until 300BC. Now those numbers are really interesting: Thales started investigating the mathematical basis of Geometry in 600BC; Euclid published his famous texts on the mathematics of Geometry in 300BC. Euclid's writings include the observation that a triangle's angles all add up to 180 degrees; however, the Greeks observed that you could make thr

              • "the Greeks observed that you could make three turns while sailing and end up where you started, yet the angles didn't add up to 180 degrees"
                that's very interesting

                but I object to your point of view on consensus of information

                "a physical fact"
                what is that supposed to mean?

                "people actually believed the earth was flat"
                which people? every sailor? how many? how do you know?

                Just acknowledge that the records do not exist to be able to speculate on this. What's the point anyway? To say that everyone in the olden d

                • what is that supposed to mean?

                  It means circa 600BC, the Greeks considered and debated the possibility of a round earth, drawing postulates in the form "IF the earth were round...". Circa 300BC, the Greeks had decided the earth is definitely round, and that the consideration of a flat earth was factually incorrect.

                  Just acknowledge that the records do not exist to be able to speculate on this.

                  What are you talking about? We know Pythagoreas proposed the round earth hypothesis in ancient Greece; and Aristotle provided empirical evidence arguing that the earth is indeed round based on real, groundbreaking observat

                  • Instinct is not intuition. Intuition is what may have inclined some people to believe the world was a flat place. The distinction is extremely important.
                    There is no evidence of any idea led to by instinct in any of this. Instinct is the product of long and consistent experience. Intuition is the product of consistent experience over a much shorter period of time and is much more malleable.

                    Many birds' instincts must tell them on some conscious level that the world is round, otherwise how would they be able t

                    • You used instinct in place of intuition in the above. They are often used semantically to mean the same thing, although this is technically not correct, as you say.

                      By the way, spending a lot of energy taking one line of argument and then switching to semantics when you've lost is a dead giveaway that your position is intractable.

                      You are using a few very examples and not accounting for all the ones that may have been lost.

                      Your argument has become, "Well, that's just what we *know*! What about what we *don't* know?!" We don't know about the aliens on Seti Alpha Prime, so there must be aliens.

      • Fod such a long analysis, you seem to have started from an iffy place.

        It is technically impossible for something to be good for the economy as a whole but bad for the people.

        Good for the economy is a term that needs defining. You eventually get into evaluating if something is good for the economy. But you never define what good for the economy would be. And that precedes evaluating potential actions.

        Let's therefore use the most common definition, the measure of the economy is the GDP. Obviously, higher

        • Good for the economy is a term that needs defining. You eventually get into evaluating if something is good for the economy. But you never define what good for the economy would be. And that precedes evaluating potential actions.

          Uh, the explanation that followed did outline the increase in per-capita wealth.

          Let's therefore use the most common definition, the measure of the economy is the GDP. Obviously, higher GDP -> better economy. Therefore, something "good" for the economy raises GDP.

          Raising per-capita GDP (not just flat GDP) necessarily means individuals are wealthier and the standard-of-living of the poorest of poor is better. Food is more plentiful and luxuries come down from the rich to the hands of the poor.

          There is no reason something cannot raise GDP and be bad for the majority of the people in a country. I mean that "technically" and "logically." There are a lot of examples involving horrible human rights abuses (e.g. slavery.) I don't want to delve into them.

          Slavery tends to expend a large amount of labor resources for minimal gain in developed economies, often reducing wealth. Slaves must be fed and cared for, because replacing a slave is expensive

      • Evaluating what's good for an economy is hard. You've seemed to sidetrack on evaluating what's good for a society

        I wish more people recognized the difference between "What is good for the economy" and "What is good for society."

        • There's a lot of intersection. Faster per-capita GDP growth means better welfare systems, higher standard-of-living at the bottom, less homelessness and hunger, greater access to healthcare, and the like in any future time frame. Society has a lot of secondary drivers related to holding to its form.

          • That's true, but you need to see how they intersect.
            IF the price of healthcare dropped (to say, $300 a year per person) then it would be cheap enough that only ideologues would care if it were paid for by the government or by individuals.
            • by lgw ( 121541 )

              But it can't - that wouldn't even pay for the power to the MRI machines, let alone the machines and the people to operate them.

              • Clearly we need to invent a tricoroder.
              • At one point, respiration cost a lot. The original Iron Lung was basically invented in 1670, but was impractical--too complex to build; of course they could do it on that technology, and then someone could hand-operate it 24/7, and the technology to make steel could do so with ~200 times the labor of modern steel-making techniques. They'd have to hand-hammer plate steel instead of rolling it; and blast furnaces were charcoal-driven until the 1700s. Hot-blast furnaces in the 1830s century revolutionized

                • by lgw ( 121541 )

                  Oh, they sure will in some distant future. But by then will have new latest and greatest expensive medical tech - unless we get socialized medicine, of course, then all such progress will fade away.

                  • It is unlikely all such progress would fade away, and certainly not for that.

                    Your premise is that healthcare will get cheaper, and then it can get more expensive as new technology arrives. The first problem is people will then move their spending away from healthcare, and the market will no longer bear expensive treatments. The *second* problem is the general advancement of technology means the next latest-and-greatest technology is ... relatively expensive: it's as expensive as our shiny new stuff now

                    • by lgw ( 121541 )

                      Your premise is that healthcare will get cheaper, and then it can get more expensive as new technology arrives.

                      Not quite. My premise is that we as a society pay the most we can afford for good health care, rather than the least we can manage, because we like to stay alive, and not in pain if possible. That means new tech is funded by dropping prices in old tech.

                      I'm not sure we disagree on this.

                      The advance of technology ensures specific treatments get cheaper over time (or cheaper substitute treatments are found - scans replacing exploratory surgery and so on). The combination of our strong survival instinct and t

                    • Not quite. My premise is that we as a society pay the most we can afford for good health care, rather than the least we can manage, because we like to stay alive, and not in pain if possible.

                      I can disprove this in one shot.

                      Circa 1950, 25% of the average family's income paid for discretionary spending and entertainment [theatlantic.com]; circa 2003, 44% spent on same [theatlantic.com]. Health care spending raised from 5% to 6%.

                      To put this clearly: the median family freed up 20% of their income and used it to buy plasma TVs and gameboys, rather than luxury-class healthcare. That's not even correct: housing dropped by about 50% [wordpress.com], and we spent the additional 14% of our income *plus* 5% more on buying bigger houses.

                      So out of 3

  • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @01:08PM (#52282689)

    A lot of teenagers celebrated their seventeenth and eighteenth birthday this week.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Keep kids under 40 off the internet in total.

  • What if the kids were only using it to hook up with people in order to do homework together?
  • This week at the same time as the ban Tinder population of "18" year golds grew by approximate the same number of banned 13-17 year olds. This solved nothing.

  • Doesn't that very demographic account for 90% of their users? This is like Slashdot banning socially-awkward nerds.
  • I wouldn't know... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zanadou ( 1043400 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @08:33PM (#52285737)

    I wouldn't know. Its changelog just states

    "Improvements & fixes"

    ...like every other fucking "app" and program update since 2011.

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