Social media platforms and websites will be legally necessary to protect children from accessing harmful content or risking fines, said the communications guard.
Ofcom has published new regulations, known as children’s codes that will require technological companies to install age verification checks and the praise change algorithm to the continuous operation in the United Kingdom.
The sites must adhere to the standards before July 25. Any site that houses pornography or content that fosters self -harm, suicide or eating disorders must have solid age controls to protect children from accessing that content.
The Head ofcom, Dame Melanie Dawes, says that the codes will create “foods on the safest social networks.”
However, some critics say that restrictions do not get far enough, calling it a “bitter pill so that accumulated parents swallow.”
Ian Russell, president of the Molly Rose Foundation, which was created in honor of his daughter, who touched his own life at age 14, said he was “dismayed by the lack of ambition” in the codes.
But Professor Victoria Baines, a former Facebook security officer, told the BBC that it is “a step in the right direction.”
Talking to the BBC Radio 4 program at Thorsday, he said: “The big technological companies are really familiar, so they are leaving money behind and, more importantly, they are leaving people behind.”
According to codes, algorithms should also be configured to filter harmful content of the feeds and recommendations of children.
In addition to age verifications, there will also be more reporting and complaint systems, and the platforms will replicate faster measures to evaluate and address harmful content when they are aware of whether it is so.
All platforms must also have a “person named responsible for children’s safety”, and risk management for children must be reviewed annually by a higher body.
If companies do not comply with the regulations presented before July 24, ofcom said it has “the power to impose fines and, in very serious cases, request a court order to prevent the site or application from being aviaxable in the United Kingdom.”
