What do parents need to know about Yubo?

How does Yubo work?

Yubo is a live social discovery app that is free to download from the App Store and Google Play. More than 60 million young people use our platform every day to connect and engage with others from all over the world. The app is designed specifically to help young people today expand their social circles online, similar to how they would in real life. Unlike most other social media platforms, Yubo does not use any approval metrics such as likes or followers, which allows our users to express themselves authentically and make genuine friendships without the pressures of performance. 

There are 2 main ways to make friends on Yubo – through livestreams and through swipes. Swiping has become natural for Gen Z as a simple and straightforward way to demonstrate interest in connecting. While swiping is used differently across every type of app you can think of, for Yubo specifically it is focused on finding potential friends – this can be especially helpful when finding others who share similar interests or personalities. On their profiles, Yubo users can add tags, emojis and media that showcase who they are and what they like or dislike. You swipe right on friends you’d like to talk to, and if the other person does the same, you’re all set to start a conversation and strike up a friendship. 

The second way of finding friends is through our livestreaming feature. Users can explore the Live feed page to find live streams they are interested in based on topic, language or title. Once a user finds a livestream they’d like to join, they can jump right in and begin watching. Once they are in a livestream as a watcher, they can also request to join as a streamer. Every user also has the ability to start their very own livestream for others to join. You can have an unlimited number of viewers and a maximum of 10 streamers per livestream. Most of our users actually prefer staying in small circles with friends they feel comfortable with in our virtual community. 

Does Yubo use localization? 

As our concept is to meet people worldwide, you might wonder if our platform discloses users’ location on the app. When downloading the app, Yubo gives each user the choice to share their location or not. Users can also choose to only share their country or city, which allows the app to match them with friends that speak the same language. At any point, this option is easily changeable in your profile, you can hide/show your location at any time.

It is also important to note that the location options are disabled for all users under the age of 18  and their location information is hidden on the app by default. 

How does Yubo make sure its users always speak to real people?

Yubo’s main focus has always been safety, which is why we never stop innovating to create new safety features or iterating on those we have already implemented over the years across the app. We recently released an advanced, platform-wide age-verification process in partnership with Yoti that age-verifies users on Yubo. Following a successful beta test among our youngest users (13 to 14 years old), we released it to all our users. Today, we’re proud to say that 100% of our users are verified, which we accomplished 3 months ahead of schedule. 

This new system adds an extra layer of security and protection during user sign-up and will reduce the number of bots, fake profiles and bad actors on the platform. It will also help to ensure that users are the age they say, and assist Yubo in age-gating to limit interaction between teens and adults on the platform. 

How does Yubo protect young users from abuse and regulate bad behaviors?

Yubo has strict Community Guidelines in place in order to protect, educate and support members of our growing community through innovative technology, a 24/7 team of Safety Specialists, and real-time moderation and intervention. We also have an independent Safety Board made of industry experts and work with NGOs, charities, law enforcement authorities and other organizations on digital safety issues.

Every new user must accept these Yubo’s guidelines when they sign up for the app. Our Community Guidelines prohibit nudity (and partial nudity including underwear), violence, drugs, hate speech, fake profiles, CSAM, bullying and more. When someone violates these guidelines, we investigate and take the appropriate action – this might include sending a warning, filtering and removing content, suspending a user or issuing permanent bans at the device level. We encourage our users to report any concerns to us and our own algorithms also generate reports when they detect a possible breach of our guidelines so we can take appropriate action.

Our Community Guidelines apply to all our users, no matter where they are in the world, and apply to content (including text, images, video live streaming and audio) on their profiles, live-streaming and chatting on Yubo. Because everything change so quickly in the digital world, these guidelines are a living document that we update regularly.

If you would like to find out more about our commitment to user safety and the tools we have in place, please visit our Safety Hub. You can also find details of the actions taken by our Safety team in our Transparency Report.