This is so wrong on so many levels. Britain would undergo a mass tantrum.
How are parents supposed to entertain their kids if they can't spend all day on YouTube?
And what about all the
privacy implications of letting social media companies have complete identity details of their users. It will be like Cambridge Analytica on speed.
Jeremy Hunt wrote to the social media companies:
Dear Colleagues,
Thank you for participating in the working group on children and young people's mental health and social media with officials from my Department and DCMS. We appreciate your time and engagement, and your willingness to continue discussions and
potentially support a communications campaign in this area, but I am disappointed by the lack of voluntary progress in those discussions.
We set three very clear challenges relating to protecting children and young people's mental
health: age verification, screen time limits and cyber-bullying. As I understand it, participants have focused more on promoting work already underway and explaining the challenges with taking further action, rather than offering innovative solutions or
tangible progress.
In particular, progress on age verification is not good enough. I am concerned that your companies seem content with a situation where thousands of users breach your own terms and conditions on the minimum user
age. I fear that you are collectively turning a blind eye to a whole generation of children being exposed to the harmful emotional side effects of social media prematurely; this is both morally wrong and deeply unfair on parents, who are faced with the
invidious choice of allowing children to use platforms they are too young to access, or excluding them from social interaction that often the majority of their peers are engaging in. It is unacceptable and irresponsible for you to put parents in this
position.
This is not a blanket criticism and I am aware that these aren't easy issues to solve. I am encouraged that a number of you have developed products to help parents control what their children an access online in response
to Government's concerns about child online protection, including Google's Family Link. And I recognise that your products and services are aimed at different audiences, so different solutions will be required. This is clear from the submissions you've
sent to my officials about the work you are delivering to address some of these challenges. However, it is clear to me that the voluntary joint approach has not delivered the safeguards we need to protect our children's mental health. In May, the
Department
for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will publish the Government response to the Internet Safety Strategy consultation, and I will be working with the Secretary of State to explore what other avenues are open to us to
pursue the reforms we need. We will not rule out legislation where it is needed.
In terms of immediate next steps, I appreciate the information that you provided our officials with last month but would be grateful if you would set
out in writing your companies' formal responses, on the three challenges we posed in November. In particular, I would like to know what additional new steps you have taken to protect children and young people since November in each of the specific
categories we raised: age verification, screen time limits and cyber-bullying. I invite you to respond by the end of this month, in order to inform the Internet Safety Strategy response. It would also be helpful if you can set out any ideas or further
plans you have to make progress in these areas.
During the working group meetings I understand you have pointed to the lack of conclusive evidence in this area — a concern which I also share. In order to address this, I have asked
the Chief Medical Officer to undertake an evidence review on the impact of technology on children and young people's mental health, including on healthy screen time. 1 will also be working closely with DCMS and UKRI to commission research into all these
questions, to ensure we have the best possible empirical basis on which to make policy. This will inform the Government's approach as we move forwards.
Your industry boasts some of the brightest minds and biggest budgets globally.
While these issues may be difficult, I do not believe that solutions on these issues are outside your reach; I do question whether there is sufficient will to reach them.
I am keen to work with you to make technology a force for
good in protecting the next generation. However, if you prove unwilling to do so, we will not be deterred from making progress.
The Information Commissioner's Office has for some bizarre reason have been given immense powers to censor the internet.
And in an early opportunity to exert its power it has proposed a 'regulation' that would require strict age verification for
nearly all mainstream websites that may have a few child readers and some material that may be deemed harmful for very young children. Eg news websites that my have glamour articles or perhaps violent news images.
In a mockery of 'data protection'
such websites would have to implement strict age verification requiring people to hand over identity data to most of the websites in the world.
Unsurprisingly much of the internet content industry is unimpressed. A six weerk consultation on the
new censorship rules has just closed and according to the Financial Times:
Companies and industry groups have loudly pushed back on the plans, cautioning that they could unintentionally quash start-ups and endanger
people's personal data. Google and Facebook are also expected to submit critical responses to the consultation.
Tim Scott, head of policy and public affairs at Ukie, the games industry body, said it was an inherent contradiction
that the ICO would require individuals to give away their personal data to every digital service.
Dom Hallas, executive director at the Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec), which represents digital start-ups in the UK, said
the proposals would result in a withdrawal of online services for under-18s by smaller companies:
The code is seen as especially onerous because it would require companies to provide up to six different versions of
their websites to serve different age groups of children under 18.
This means an internet for kids largely designed by tech giants who can afford to build two completely different products. A child could access YouTube Kids, but
not a start-up competitor.
Stephen Woodford, chief executive of the Advertising Association -- which represents companies including Amazon, Sky, Twitter and Microsoft -- said the ICO needed to conduct a full technical
and economic impact study, as well as a feasibility study. He said the changes would have a wide and unintended negative impact on the online advertising ecosystem, reducing spend from advertisers and so revenue for many areas of the UK media.
An ICO spokesperson said:
We are aware of various industry concerns about the code. We'll be considering all the responses we've had, as well as engaging further where necessary, once the consultation
has finished.
Foreign websites will block UK users altogether rather than be compelled to invest time and money into a nigh-impossible compliance process. By Heather Burns
For some bizarre reason the ICO seems to have been given powers to make wide ranging internet censorship law on the fly without needing it to be considered by parliament. And with spectacular
incompetence, they have come up with a child safety plan to require nearly every website in Britain to implement strict age verification. Baldric would have been proud, it is more or less an internet equivalent of making children safe on the roads by
banning all cars.
A trade association for news organisations, News Media Association, summed up the idea in a consultation response saying:
ICO's Age Appropriate Code Could Wreak Havoc On News Media
Unless amended, the draft code published for consultation by the ICO would undermine the news media industry, its journalism and business innovation online. The ICO draft code would require commercial news media publishers to choose between their online
news services being devoid of audience or stripped of advertising, with even editorial content subject to ICO judgment and sanction, irrespective of compliance with general law and codes upheld by the courts and relevant regulators.
The NMA strongly objects to the ICO's startling extension of its regulatory remit, the proposed scope of the draft code, including its express application to news websites, its application of the proposed standards to all users in the
absence of robust age verification to distinguish adults from under 18-year olds and its restrictions on profiling. The NMA considers that news media publishers and their services should be excluded from scope of the proposed draft Code.
Attracting and retaining audience on news websites, digital editions and online service, fostering informed reader relationships, are all vital to the ever evolving development of successful newsbrands and their services, their
advertising revenues and their development of subscription or other payment or contribution models, which fund and sustain the independent press and its journalism.
There is surely no justification for the ICO to attempt by way of
a statutory age appropriate design code, to impose access restrictions fettering adults (and children's) ability to receive and impart information, or in effect impose 'pre watershed' broadcast controls upon the content of all currently publicly
available, free to use, national, regional and local news websites, already compliant with the general law and editorial and advertising codes of practice upheld by IPSO and the ASA.
In practice, the draft Code would undermine
commercial news media publishers' business models, as audience and advertising would disappear. Adults will be deterred from visiting newspaper websites if they first have to provide age verification details. Traffic and audience will also be reduced if
social media and other third parties were deterred from distributing or promoting or linking titles' lawful, code compliant, content for fear of being accused of promoting content detrimental to some age group in contravention of the Code. Audience
measurement would be difficult. It would devastate advertising, since effective relevant personalised advertising will be rendered impossible, and so destroy the vital commercial revenues which actually fund the independent media, its trusted journalism
and enable it to innovate and evolve to serve the ever-changing needs of its audience.
The draft Code's impact would be hugely damaging to the news industry and wholly counter to the Government's policy on sustaining high quality,
trusted journalism at local, regional, national and international levels.
Newspapers online content, editorial and advertising practices do not present any danger to children. The ICO has not raised with the industry any evidence
of harm, necessitating such drastic restrictions, caused by reading news or service of advertisements where these are compliant with the law and the standards set by specialist media regulators.
The Information Commissioner's Office
has a 'cunning plan'
Of course the News Media Association is making a strong case for its own exclusion from the ICO's 'cunning plan', but the idea is equally devastating for websites from any other internet sector.
Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham was
called to give evidence to Parliament's DCMS Select Committee this week on related matters, and she spoke of a clearly negative feedback to her age verification idea.
Her sidekick backtracked a little, saying that the ICO did not mean Age
Verification via handing over passport details, more like one of those schemes where AI guesses age by scanning what sort of thing the person has been posting on social media. (Which of course requires a massive grab of data that should be best kept
private, especially for children). The outcome seems to be a dictate to the internet industry to 'innovate' and find a solution to age verification that does not require the mass hand over of private data (you know like what the data protection laws
are supposed to be protecting). The ICO put a time limit on this innovation demand of about 12 months.
In the meantime the ICO has told the news industry that age verification idea won't apply to them, presumably because they can kick up a hell of
stink about the ICO in their mass market newspapers. Denham said:
We want to encourage children to find out about the world, we want children to access news sites.
So the concern about the
impact of the code on media and editorial comment and journalism I think is unfounded. We don't think there will be an impact on news media sites. They are already regulated and we are not a media regulator.
She did speak any similar
reassuring words to any other sector of the internet industry who are likely to be equally devastated by the ICO's 'cunning plan'.
Back in April of this year the data protection police of the ICO set about drawing up rules for nearly all commercial websites in how they should deal with children and their personal data.
Rather perversely the ICO decided that age verification
should underpin a massively complex regime to require different data processing for several age ranges. And of course the children's data would be 'protected' by requiring nearly all websites to demand everybody's identity defining personal data in order
to slot people into the ICO's age ranges.
The ICO consulted on their proposals and it seems that the internet industry forcefully pointed out that it was not a good idea for nearly all websites to have to demand age verification from all website
visitors.
The ICO has yet to publish the results of the consultation or its response to the criticism but the ICO have been playing down this ridiculously widespread age verification. This week the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham further
hinted at this in a blog. She wrote:
Our consultation on the
proposed code began in April, and prompted more than 450 written responses, as well more
than 40 meetings with key stakeholders. We were pleased with the breadth of views we heard. Parents, schools and children's campaign groups helped us better understand the problems young people can face online, whether using social media services or
popular games, while developers, tech companies and online service providers gave us a crucial insight into the challenges industry faces to make this a reality.
...
This consultation has helped us ensure our final code
will be effective, proportionate and achievable.
It has also flagged the need for us to be clearer on some standards.
We do not want to see an age-gated internet, where visiting any digital service requires
people to prove how old they are. Our aim has never been to keep children from online services, but to protect them within it. We want providers to set their privacy settings to high as a default, and to have strategies in place for how children's data
is handled.
We do not want to prevent young people from engaging with the world around them, and we've been quick to respond to concerns that our code would affect news websites. This isn't the case. As we told a DCMS Select
Committee in July, we do not want to create any barriers to children accessing news content. The news media plays a fundamental role in children's lives and the final version of the code will make that very clear.
That final
version of the code will be delivered to the Secretary of State ahead of the statutory deadline of 23 November 2019.
We recognise the need to allow companies time to implement the standards and ensure they are complying with the
law. The law allows for a transition period of up to a year and we'll be considering the most appropriate approach to this, before making a final decision in the autumn. In addition to the code itself, my office is also preparing a significant package to
ensure that organisations are supported through any transition period, including help and advice for designers and engineers.
The Information Commissions Office (ICO) earlier in the year presented draft internet censorship laws targeted at the commendable aim of protecting the personal data of younger website users. These rules are legally enforceable under the EU GDPR and are
collectively known as The Age Appropriate Design Code.
The ICO originally proposed that website designers should consider several age ranges of their users. The youngest users should be presented with no opportunity to reveal their
personal data and then the websites could relent a little on the strictness of the rules as they get older. It all sounds good at first read... until one considers exactly how to know how old users are.
And of course ICO proposed age verification
(AV) to prove that people are old enough for the tier of data protection being applied.
ISO did not think very hard about the bizarre contradiction that AV requires people to hand over enough data to give identity thieves an orgasm. So the ICO
were going to ask people to hand over their most sensitive ID to any websites that ask... in the name of the better protection of the data that they have just handed over anyway.
The draft rules were ridiculous, requiring even a small innocent
site with a shopping trolley to require AV before allowing people to type in their details in the shopping trolley.
Well the internet industry strongly pointed out the impracticality of the ICO's nonsense ideas. And indeed the ICO released a
blog and made a few comments that suggest it would be scaling back on its universal AV requirements.
The final censorship were delivered to the government on schedule on 23rd November 2019.
The industry is surely very keen to know if the
ICO has retreated on its stance, but the ICO has now just announced that the publication date will be delayed until the next government is in place. It sounds that their ideas may still be a little controversial, and they need to hide behind a government
minister before announcing the new rules.