The Digital Child Newsletter - 25th July
Edited by Luke Taylor
Big news:
KOSA and COPPA2.0 come to the senate in the USA.
Apple faces questions on its CSAM prevention measures.
The UK Fines TikTok
America:
Guess who’s back: The KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act) and COPPA2.0 (Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act) are set to come back to the Senate floor this week for a procedural vote. If it passes in the Senate it will then move to the House of Representatives and will hopefully be passed before the November election. Both of these Bills aim to mitigate harms to minors through various mechanisms, such as enforcing parental control, stopping certain auto-play functions and raising the ages of privacy protections.
Apple:
Apple’s responsibility: Apple has been accused by the NSPCC of failing to adequately prevent the distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its platforms. They argued that the company's focus on user privacy has hindered efforts to detect and report CSAM. Despite implementing new measures like scanning for known CSAM images uploaded to iCloud, these have been deemed insufficient by some watchdogs.
To highlight why the NSPCC have a bone to pick with Apple, see these statistics below:
“Through data gathered via freedom of information requests and shared exclusively with the Guardian, the children’s charity found Apple was implicated in 337 recorded offenses of child abuse images between April 2022 and March 2023 in England and Wales. In 2023, Apple made just 267 reports of suspected CSAM on its platforms worldwide to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which is in stark contrast to its big tech peers, with Google reporting more than 1.47m and Meta reporting more than 30.6m, per NCMEC’s annual report.”
UK:
Ofcom vs. TikTok: TikTok have been forced to cough up £2.4 million to Ofcom after failing to appropriately respond to questions around its parental response features. Ofcom ultimately found that TikTok had insufficient checks in place, leading to an inaccurate data submission. The platform was slow in presenting the error and fixing the issue, finally providing said information 7 months late.
Big Tech:
An Insta-cull: Instagram has removed 63,000 accounts tied to financial sextortion schemes, according to a blog post released from Meta today. A criminal gang, called the Yahoo boys who are based in Nigeria, West Africa, had 2,500 accounts which were linked to 20 individuals. These accounts primarily targeted American men in a bid for financial coercion.
AI, here to help: Virginia Tech researchers have developed a chatbot designed to educate children about online safety, after receiving an $850,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. This AI-powered chatbot engages with kids to teach them online safety practices, such as recognising cyberbullying, protecting personal information, and understanding the importance of digital footprints.
Personal and private: In the light of all the emerging stories around sextortion, “revenge porn” and IIA (Internet Image Abuse), these stats are an hard read.
In the UK, this study found that 20% of people store explicit images of themselves on their devices, with the highest rates found among 16-24 year-olds, where this rises to 40%, followed by 25-34 year-olds, where it rises to 38%. A quarter of respondents had shared such images of themselves with people they are chatting to online, increasing to a high of 50% of 25-34 year-olds.
Kaspersky said its UK findings correlated strongly with the now widespread problem of intimate image abuse (IIA), known more sensationally as “revenge porn”, with 33% of UK respondents saying they either knew someone who had experienced such abuse or experienced it themselves, rising to 69% of 16-24 year-olds and 63% of 25-34 year-olds.
Around the World:
USA:
The Porn bans: While there have been no major new updates on this front within the US, this graph is a helpful reminder of where they currently are. For more info on what this could all mean, go here.
Ireland:
The encryption option: There have been some judicial calls for gardaí and security services to have legal powers to access encrypted online communications. Specifically, the laws will mandate the use of robust age verification systems, enhanced privacy settings for minors, and the swift removal of harmful content. Justice Minister Helen McEntee highlighted the need for social media companies to take more responsibility for the safety of children on their platforms.
"This new legislation will be a significant step forward in protecting our children from the dangers they face online. It is crucial that we hold social media companies accountable and ensure they implement the necessary safeguards to protect young users."
Justice Minister Helen McEntee.
Vietnam:
More to be done: This recent VietnamNet article requires legal reforms to enhance online safety for children. It emphasised the increasing dangers children face online, such as cyberbullying, exposure to inappropriate content, and online exploitation, especially in a country of 24.7 million where the average age of children using the internet is 9, 4 years younger than the global average.
“Survey data from the MOLISA in 2023 shows that 89 per cent of children access and use the internet, with 87 per cent of them using it daily. Apart from time spent on studying, children spend average 5-7 hours per day on social media.”
Editor’s picks:
Laila Mickelwait on X: P*RNHUB IS A CRIME SCENE. SHUT. IT. DOWN. Read the full behind the scenes story of the battle to hold P*rnhub and its owners accountable for monetizing mass sexual crime in my new book “Takedown” being released tomorrow wherever books are sold!
Katharine Birbalsingh on X: “Most parents regret giving their children a smartphone and almost half believe the devices have changed their personalities - so is it time for Labour to rethink its policy on what tech is safe for under 16s?” We should ban phones to under 16s.
Damian McBeath on X: The impact of phones on children's mental health has been the topic of much debate since the release of @JonHaidt Anxious Generation. The impact on children's learning is not recieving the attention it needs. Look at this data; something happened in 2012... Sound familiar?
