Child safety deadline looms, Eurosky lifts off and new sextortion documentary
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your need-to-know news and analysis about platform policy, content moderation and internet regulation. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
With the UK’s child safety codes coming into play next week, the giant platform poker game over age assurance is entering its final round. A host of platforms have shown their hands but the rest? Still holding their cards close. The stakes are high so we’ll see who folds and who tries to bluff their way through.
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Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
With new Ofcom child safety codes coming into force next week (25th July), all the talk is about the implementation of age assurance measures for platforms with a UK presence.
This week, we saw Bluesky expand on its plans to verify users’ ages (using Epic Games’ Kids Web Services, if you’re wondering) while Reddit will use Persona which, I noted, already works with OpenAI to screen users. Both platforms follow Pornhub’s announcement two weeks back (EiM #295) and will no doubt be followed by other platforms this week. I expect some to be more forthcoming than others with their plans.
Media watch: News coverage of the codes has ramped up and I was very interested in the interview given by Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes to the BBC, in which she called it a “really big moment” for children’s safety. Putting aside the content of the codes for a second, I was impressed by Dawes’ understanding of safety trade-offs and her pushing back against some ill-informed questions by one of the BBC’s highest-profile presenters. More analysis on this story in this week’s Ctrl-Alt-Speech.
It’s worth noting that this is happening at the same time as new rules come into play in Ireland, which — according to The Gist’s Simon McGarr — are “manifestly insane”. The EU also outlined its approach for child safety this week, which includes a bloc-wide age verification app.
In not-unrelated news, The Wikimedia Foundation has created a handy checklist designed to help policymakers assess whether proposed regulation would affect Wikipedia’s core operating model — or indeed any platforms that provide information in the public interest. The Wikipedia Test’s seven questions cover access to information, free expression and privacy & safety with some helpful context for each. One wonders whether someone in the Ofcom office is furiously completing the test right now…