Faceparty bans users 36+

May 22, 2008 20:41 GMT  ·  By

While most social networks on the Internet struggle to attract more users of all ages, Faceparty took the decision to ban all the registered members with ages above 36 because of new legislation. At least, this is what the representatives stated but, according to various sources, the new laws don't support the ban. The reason for the removal of "a huge number of accounts", as it is named by the Facerparty administrators, is pretty uncanny: people older than 36 could be sexual offenders or pedophiles, so all the service wants to do is actually to protect its younger users.

"We understand that only a minority of older users are sex offenders, but you must understand that we cannot tell which - we can only delete all to make the site safe and we apologise for that. However, we are following the law and you cannot think we are wrong for doing that," Faceparty explains its decision.

However, as mentioned, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act voted recently does not provide any sort of information about potential offenders, Out-Law.com explains. Moreover, the law doesn't state that people over 36 could be offenders, the same source continued. However, Faceparty explained the ban by pointing to the law and indicating that the account removal was not made due to the age of its members.

"Despite malicious rumours spread by a few people on the website, it is not true that we have deleted members due to 'ageism' nor older members who have cool tools (we can check members against the sex offenders list if they have purchased cool tools). If you are an older user with cool tools, then you have been deleted for another reason on this list," it explained in the notification published on its official website.