What you need to know
- Age verification at Vimeo is an important security measure to protect younger audiences from mature content—it was first introduced in September 2025 to comply with new EU and UK regulations.
- In June 2026, we added proactive measures to make the process more precise. Now, age verification relies on a stronger content detection system to identify mature content. We've introduced this updated process in the EU, the UK and—for the first time—Brazil.
- We reviewed nearly four million unrated videos that were previously gated. Videos in which we found no indicators of mature content no longer require age verification.
- Today, Vimeo's age verification process better aligns protections with risk indicators while giving our audience a smoother watch experience.
At Vimeo, our goal is to bring all our viewers a safe and enjoyable experience—especially when it comes to protecting younger audiences from potentially inappropriate content. In September 2025, we introduced a new age verification process in response to the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK's Online Safety Act (OSA).
Today, Vimeo's age verification process proactively flags and gates mature content with greater precision than ever before. This process has been introduced for viewers in the EU, the UK, and—for the first time—Brazil, in accordance with the country's Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents.
Here's how we refined the process over the past several months.
First iteration: September 2025
When adding a video on Vimeo, uploaders are asked to provide a rating: All Audiences or Mature. If no rating is added, the video is labeled Unrated.
As we were shaping our new age verification process, we found ourselves working with a large volume of unrated historical content. Without a reliable way to assess that content at scale, we took the cautious path: we treated unrated videos as potentially mature. As a result, EU and UK-based viewers accessing mature-rated or unrated content on Vimeo were asked to go through the age verification process.
New approach: June 2026
With the foundational protections in place, we turned our attention to building a more reliable process to identify mature content and reduce the number of unrated videos on Vimeo. This was necessary to make the age verification process more targeted and precise, and had the added benefit of removing unnecessary friction from the viewing process.
We approached this challenge from two angles.
First, we built a more robust content detection system to identify mature content. This acts as a secondary check to make sure videos are properly rated.
Then we turned to the backlog. Over the course of several months, we used our new internal system to review nearly four million unrated videos to determine whether they contained mature content. Each video was automatically reviewed by our detection system and then manually reviewed by human moderators to ensure accuracy. Any videos that proved to be mature remained gated—others were made accessible to viewers without age verification.
The result is a more precise age verification process that better aligns protections with the risk indicators available to us—helping us protect our European, British, and Brazilian audiences without compromising their viewing experience.
Looking ahead, we'll continue to evolve our age verification process in close alignment with new technologies and global regulations.
Learn more about the age verification process here, or reach out to our support team with any questions.
