Regulators advocate compulsory verification of the age “online”
A cartoon episode may lead, through video suggestion method, to children being exposed online to adult content, which prompts regulators to advocate mandatory age verification of users.
The requirement to check the age of users will be implemented in the UK to pornographic content marketing sites, but the UK’s Creative and Digital Industries Minister Margot James believes it can be extended to platforms such as Youtube or Twitter as a way to reduce the accidental exposure of children and adolescents to this type of content.
Margo James, who was speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon today, considered the mandatory introduction of the 18-year-old as the age of consent an “important step” but “only partially effective” and “non-controversial” because of risks of privacy.
“It will eliminate or greatly reduce the chances of a child or young person under the age of 18 accidentally encountering online pornography. It will not eradicate it because at the moment we are introducing legislation only for pornography marketing sites There are other websites and social networks where pornography is available, like Twitter, but they have no commercial goals, “he said.
“We are starting with the main sources of pornography and introducing a barrier to children who encounter pornography accidentally, which happens on a large scale. It will also reduce the exposure of teenagers who actively research pornography,” he added.
Lubos Kuklis of the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services has argued that mandatory age verification is already addressed in a recently adopted European directive on online child protection and is a possibility to be considered outside the UK United.
“We are monitoring developments in the UK and this is the way. The problem is that in protecting children, if we are to create subsystems that use data, the risk of privacy exists,” he said.
He added that it is necessary to caution, for example, the risk that the data could be used for children to be targeted in advertising campaigns.
Exposure of children to traumatic and inappropriate content is a growing problem, experts say.
The Internet Watch Fondation, which monitors this type of content, recorded a 94% increase in two years, having identified, in the UK alone, more than 132 thousand videos inappropriate for those under 18 years of age.
