The very beginning of the site is shocking or annoying, but the “Dating Teens” site, dedicated – in theory – to meeting people between the ages of 13 and 25, is actually not illegal. However, for several days Internet users have been warning about the excesses of this site, accessible since 2006 (and since 2022 in the form of an Android application), which evokes the massive presence of pedophiles and other people over the required age.
As numerous media have verified, including Tech&Co, it is true that as soon as a profile is created, taking a 13-year-old girl as an example, conversation requests arrive in a few minutes and quickly lead to discussions. a sexual connotation emanating from adults.
A discussion platform about everything
But if the content of the conversations can obviously be subject to the law, as long as a complaint is made and a complaint is filed, the existence of the “Dating Teens” site and others of its kind has nothing to do with illegality. First of all, because the principle of the site, that is, to allow discussion between consenting people, is totally in accordance with the law.
However, the platforms have the obligation to take action in case of reports of malicious profiles and, in the most extreme cases, deactivate them. A process provided by Rencontre adolescent, which indicates to Tech&Co that it has established a reporting and sanctioning system for each false step, which can lead to the deactivation of the account and the impossibility of re-registering. The only problem: as the founder of the site admits, the lack of moderators makes it very insufficient.
Necessary prevention
Since the host of the site is based in Belgium, it becomes even more difficult for the authorities to enforce French laws on this platform. Above all because, for the moment, nothing requires the platforms to verify the age, although Parliament recently set the numerical majority at 15 years, still in theory.
The Secretary of State for Children, Charlotte Caubel, calls for the responsibility of platforms, dating sites or traditional social networks, in the process of verifying the age of users.
In fact, only the large social media platforms will potentially be subject to this new-age verification, the text of which has not yet seen its enforcement decree published. In addition, the different authorities have not found any effective technical solution to verify age.
According to Alexandre Archambault, the only solution to effectively combat abuse on these types of platforms remains prevention: “Sexual predators did not wait for the Internet to indulge in their misdeeds. They came later to TikTok or Snapchat, but these platforms now have more advanced rules and so there has been a shift towards sites with lower audiences.”
Source: BFM TV
