UK law will protect kids online
Filmmaker Beeban Kidron, a member of Britain’s House of Lords, has been a driving force behind a new U.K. law that sets an industry-wide code of conduct for online services designed to shield the under-18 crowd from violence, pornography and exploitation.
The so-called Age Appropriate Design Code is the first law of its kind. The tech sector is already reacting as a one-year transition expires on Sept 2. Kidron has combined lobbying in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. with research and advocacy through her non-profit 5Rights Foundation.
You had a profound realization while making the 2012 film “InRealLife,” about kids online, that set you on this course.
I saw that the internet was treating children as adults and the kids couldn’t cope. Pornography and violence and unwanted contact were part of it. But it’s much more. The hostility, the fake news, the commercialization and commoditization of childhood were all a very reactionary and regressive force against the
notion of children and childhood.
How does the code bring about a safe place for kids to learn, explore and play?
It says children must have a higher bar of privacy and consideration. So, for example, you must not reveal their exact location. You also can’t economically exploit what you know about them (from surveilling their online activity). Some tech companies are already adapting. TikTok and Instagram have said they would stop direct messaging by unknown adults to children under the age of 16. YouTube introduced age verification for adult content.
Facebook’s child-focused changes for Instagram — initially in the U.S., Britain, Australia, France and Japan — include narrowing the scope of targeted ads that teens receive. It says they will now only get ads based on their age, gender and location. Is that enough?
No, we want more. But I don’t think you can underestimate the huge shift that has occurred already. This is a very complex global industry and there will be many pieces of follow-on legislation.
Facebook says it is going ahead with an Instagram for kids under 13 that won’t include ads, despite the objections of 44 U.S. state attorneys general. Is that OK with you?
No. I’ve told Facebook and a U.S. congressional subcommittee that I oppose Instagram for kids. It’s not that I don’t want kid-appropriate services. There aren’t enough of them. Kids need inventive and creative spaces to play and learn and socialize. And whilst the advances Facebook is making should be recognized, it has not proven itself a good babysitter.
What more should the industry do?
Online services need to get tougher across the board — halting direct messaging by unfamiliar adults, imposing age restrictions on adult material and not surveilling children. We’re looking for high privacy by default as the industry norm.