Snap, Meta and Roblox will adopt new security measures to protect minors from sexual harassment in the United Kingdom

Snap, Meta y Roblox have shared their commitment to the British online security regulator Ofcom to implement new security measures on their platforms to protect minors from online sexual harassmentincluding options to limit unknown contacts, artificial intelligence (AI) detection tools, and direct chat controls.

These measures have been announced in response to a letter sent by the British regulator in March of this year to the Top Websites and Apps Most Frequently Used by Younger Usersas is the case of Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube, where they were required to demonstrate their commitment to the protection of children online.

In this sense, Ofcom established as deadline April 30 so that the mentioned services inform about the measures that they would adopt to ensure the safety of minors on their platforms against the dangers of strangers on the Internet and harmful content.

Now, Snap, Meta and Roblox have confirmed to regulatory body that will implement new measures security measures designed to protect minors online, including from stricter default settings for contactsfriendship groups for children, AI-powered detection tools y chat controls direct.

As Ofcom has shared in a statement, Snap has agreed to adopt all child sexual harassment prevention measures recommended in the regulatory body’s Code of Conduct against Legal Harms. As a result, will prevent unknown adults from contacting minors on Snapchat and, in the same way, will stop encouraging minors to expand their circles friendship with people they don’t know.

These measures will apply to minors using Snapchat in the United Kingdom. Likewise, it will also implement more effective age controls in order to ensure that the under 18 years old “benefit from these new security measures” in that region.

Robloxfor its part, has committed to strengthen its protections against sexual harassment, announced earlier this year, as is the case with the new age-based accounts. Specifically, it will go further by including the possibility that parents disable direct chat services completely for children under 16 years of age.

In the case of Metahas announced that it will develop a new configuration that will hide the followers and followed lists of teenagers in Instagram by default.

Likewise, it also plans to implement AI tools to detect possible sexualized conversations between adults and adolescents in Instagram direct messages. If any offending account is identified, it will be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, in addition to taking “the coercive measures necessary”.

Meta has also indicated that will extend to Facebook its content configuration for those over 13 years of age in the main ‘feed’currently available on Instagram. This will limit the content to a more age-appropriate level.

Ofcom has clarified in this regard that these commitments “must be translated into actions“and, therefore, has established defined deadlines for the implementation of the changes mentioned by the social media companies.

In addition to all this, these new commitments also include notify the regulator every time any of these services update their risk assessments”before making significant changes to your services“. This commitment goes beyond the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, as Ofcom has clarified.

TIKTOK AND YOUTUBE WILL NOT MAKE CHANGES

On the other hand, the regulator has also reported that TikTok and YouTube have not committed to making changes significant efforts to reduce harmful content directed at minors, stating that their platforms “they are already safe for them.”

In contrast, Ofcom has assured that they have “abundant evidence” that suggests that they are still not sufficiently secure platforms. For example, he has shared that the half of UK secondary school students watching harmful content They remember finding it on TikTok (53 percent), followed by YouTube (excluding YouTube Kids) (36 percent), Instagram (34 percent) and Facebook (31 percent).

Faced with this, the regulatory body has detailed that they have sent exhaustive information requests to Meta, TikTok and YouTube about how they detect and prevent the exposure of minors to harmful content and they are analyzing their responses, even considering the possibility of subjecting these companies to independent audits.

Likewise, it has also put on the table how, despite establishing a minimum age of 13 years to be able to use its services, investigations carried out by Ofcom show that the 84 per cent of children aged 8 to 12 in the UK still use one of the top five online services.