Australia Demands Porn Sites, Big Tech to Beef Up Child Safety Measures

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Australia Demands Porn Sites, Big Tech to Beef Up Child Safety Measures
Phoenix Crawford does school work on a laptop while being home-schooled by his mum Donna Eddy on April 09, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

The Australian eSafety Commissioner revealed that it gave the internet industry half a year to develop an enforceable code of conduct to prevent children from seeing pornographic content and other inappropriate material online or have a code imposed on the industry.

In a statement Tuesday (July 2), Julie Inman Grant said that her office has written to the online industry to come up with a plan by Oct. 3 to protect minors from seeing high-impact material that they are yet to understand growing up, including sex, suicide, and eating disorders.

She added that the code should set standards for how all online content checks that such content suits users.

Separately, Grant told ABC that the Australian government conducted what it called an "age verification trial" in the past two years and has since provided information on how to improve ways to prevent children and teenagers from accidentally accessing inappropriate content.

The Guardian Australia also reported last month that the commissioner opted against requiring end-to-end (E2E) encrypted communication services to scan for such content if it would compromise their services.

Response from Big Tech on Aussie Online Safety Code

Reuters quoted the regulator that the measure covered by the code protecting children from pornography could include age verification, default parental supervision and control, and software blurring or filtering unwanted sexual content.

In response to the deadline, Google's parent company, Alphabet, said it was working closely with the industry on the new code.

On the other hand, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said it has continued its constructive engagement with the eSafety Commissioner.

Meanwhile, the Digital Industry Group (DIGI), an Australian industry body that worked with the eSafety Commissioner in formulating the first round of codes, added that it was looking forward to continuing its collaboration.

Representatives for X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that has since had a scuffle with the eSafety Commissioner regarding the recent stabbing in a church in Sydney, Apple, and other big tech firms, are yet to comment on the matter.

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Australia, Social media

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