These days, startups are trying just about everything. Some of them are wacky, if harmless, like the company turning your loved ones’ remains into stones for you to display. Others fall into the “why did you do that” category — like the startup selling an AI-powered toilet camera to analyze your stool.
A startup called Wizz is clearly the latter, in the darkest sense imaginable. Peddling “age-appropriate engagement” for users as young as 13, Wizz is a French app built on the “swipe left or right” framework typical of dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge.
Given the massive rise in child predation enabled by social media, that’s a huge responsibility — and one Wizz has fallen way short of. Though it’s meant to connect kids with others their age, in reality it’s become a mechanism for predators to meet underaged victims.
In noted by The Hill, Wizz has been implicating in a predictably stunning number of child sexual abuse incidents. Though the app claims to use “sophisticated AI safety algorithms for age verification” in order to sort users by age, real world examples show these safeguards aren’t enough to deter child predators.
In Hawai’i, for example, an 11-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted by an active-duty US Marine told police they had first met on Wizz. Despite the app’s “ironclad policies,” the 19-year-old perpetrator had allegedly posed as a 15-year-old, which the AI safety algorithm had failed to catch.
Other examples abound, like a 23-year-old pretending to be 14 in order to sexually assault an actual 14-year-old, or a 27-year-old claiming to be 16 in order to rape multiple underage girls. After receiving pushback from the company, The Hill even tested the verification system with a 28-year-old staffer, who was able to register an account as a 16-year-old.
The app has come under increasing scrutiny from both the media and consumer watchdogs, which have helped put pressure on platforms like the Google Play and Apple App Store to remove it entirely. Though those efforts were temporarily successful, Wizz was able to worm its way back in, touting new and improved safety measures.
Now, however, Congressional Republicans and Democrats are reaching across the aisle to push for the Kids Online Safety Act. If successful, the bill would establish a “Duty of Care” for online platforms to prove themselves to US regulators in order to avoid legal liability for harm, similar to the process auto manufacturers are supposed to follow to put out a new car.
As The Hill astutely observes, tech is the only industry not broadly held to these liability standards regarding the use of their products.
Whether the bill makes it across the finish line remains to be seen — but if it does, it won’t be a moment too soon.
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