While going online can be hugely beneficial for children, who use the internet for connecting with peers, accessing educational resources and for entertainment, I completely agree that it is vital that children are protected from accessing inappropriate, harmful content, including online pornography.
The Government announced in October 2019 that it would not commence the age verification provisions of Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017. While I appreciate your frustration with this decision, the Draft Online Safety Bill will be able to go further than the Digital Economy Act’s focus on online pornography on commercial adult sites. It will be able to protect children from a broader range of harmful content and activity, across a wider range of sites
Under the upcoming Online Safety Bill, companies will be expected to use age assurance or age verification technologies to prevent children from accessing services which pose the highest risk of harm, such as online pornography. This will capture both the most visited pornography sites and pornography on social media. These measures will also bring into scope more online pornography currently accessible to children than would have been covered by the narrower scope of Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act.
The final legislation, when introduced to Parliament, will also contain provisions that require companies to report child sexual exploitation and abuse content identified on their services. This will ensure companies provide law enforcement with the high-quality information they need to safeguard victims and investigate offenders.
More broadly, in line with the Government’s response to the Online Harms White Paper, the Bill will require all companies in scope to have a duty of care towards their users so that what is unacceptable offline will also be unacceptable online. They will need to consider the risks their sites may pose to the youngest and most vulnerable people and act to protect children from inappropriate content and harmful activity. Furthermore, the largest and most popular social media sites (Category 1 services) will need to act on content that is lawful but still harmful.
DS.