LONDON (Kashmir English): Britain’s media and privacy regulators have warned major social media platforms including Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube to tighten age checks and protect children or face hefty fines.
The regulators Thursday demanded that the social media firms do more to keep children off their services, lamenting that companies were failing to enforce their own minimum-age rules.
Britain has been mulling to enforce tougher curbs on children’s access to social media, with the authorities considering barring under 16s from such platforms as Australia did.
Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office expressed their grave concern about algorithmic feeds that expose children to harmful or addictive content.
“These online services are household names, but they’re failing to put children’s safety at the heart of their products,” Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, said. “That must now change quickly, or Ofcom will act”.
“Restrict strangers from contacting children”
In the latest implementation phase of Britain’s Online Safety Act, Ofcom told Facebook, Instagram and others to show by April 30 how they would tighten age checks, and restrict strangers from contacting children. The decision has been made to make feeds safer and stop testing new products on minors.
The Information Commissioner’s Office separately issued an open letter to the same platforms, calling on them to adopt modern, viable age-assurance tools to stop those under 13 accessing services not designed for them.
“There’s now modern technology at your fingertips, so there is no excuse,” Paul Arnold, ICO’s chief executive, said.
According to a Meta spokesperson, the company has been already using AI-based age detection and age-estimation tools and places teens in accounts with built-in protections.
He further said that age should be verified “centrally at the app store level so families do not have to provide personal information multiple times.
Ofcom can fine social media platforms up to 10% of their qualifying global revenue, while the ICO can issue fines of up to 4% of a company’s global annual turnover.
The watchdog in February fined Reddit nearly 14.5m pounds for failing to introduce meaningful age checks and for processing children’s data unlawfully.
