Today, Ofcom has published its call for evidence focussed on protecting children from harm. The consultation is the second of this phase of the process, following on from one earlier this year on guidance for service providers publishing pornographic content. The second phase of the regulator’s approach to implementation focuses on child safety, pornography and the protection of women and girls.
This consultation will run until 17th July, with the full regime – including additional details on categorised services – expected to come into effect from the end of 2025. You can find the consultation here.
Under the Online Safety Act, services must prevent children from encountering the most harmful content relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, and pornography. Services must also minimise children’s exposure to other serious harms, including violent, hateful or abusive material, bullying content, and content promoting dangerous challenges.
To protect children, online services must follow a three-step approach to safety, including through:
Phase 1
Assess whether children are likely to access their service – or part of it – through completing children’s access assessments. This will be broken down into two stages:
Stage 1: Whether it is possible for children to access their service or part of it, and if so then…
Stage 2: Whether there are significant numbers of children using the service or the service is likely to attract a significant number of children, known as the ‘child user condition’.
Phase 2
Complete a children’s risk assessment to identify risks their services pose to children – through completing a children’s risk assessment. For this, Ofcom recommends a four-step methodology for this risk assessment:
Understand the content that could be harmful to children.
Assess the risk of harm.
Implement safety measures and record outcomes.
Report, review and update their children’s risk assessment.
Phase 3
Take and implement safety measures to mitigate the risk to children, with more than 40 proposed safety measures in the Children’s Safety Codes drafts, including through:
Robust governance and accountability
Safer platform design choices
Providing children with information, tools and support
Further detail, and specific proposals on how services can implement each phase has been provided in Ofcom’s draft guidance. In practice, the call for evidence suggests that the appropriateness of each proposed measure should be considered alongside the below different factors:
The type of service.
The outcome of the service’s latest risk assessment.
Relevant functionalities and other characteristics.
The size of a service in terms of its UK user base.
In total, the consultation is split into five volumes which provides further details and analysis on Ofcom’s reasoning, as well as the draft codes and guidance.
Volume 1: Overview, scope and regulatory approach
Volume 2: Identifying the services children are using
Volume 3: The causes and impacts of harm to children
Volume 4: Assessing the risks of harms to children online
Volume 5: What should services do to mitigate the risk of online harms to children?
In response to the call for evidence, Alice Campbell, Head of Public Affairs, techUK has issued the below statement:
“We welcome this consultation which is an important step forward in the implementation of the Online Safety Act.
“Many in-scope companies have already started to put additional child safety measures in place in anticipation of the Online Safety Act coming into force. However, today’s consultation provides important additional detail that in-scope services will need to engage with.
“We look forward to continuing to work alongside members, Ofcom and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to ensure a robust and effective online safety regime.”
Alice Campbell
Head of Public Affairs, techUK
Alice Campbell
Head of Public Affairs, techUK
As Head of Public Affairs, Alice supports techUK’s strategic engagement with Westminster, Whitehall and beyond. She regularly works to engage with ministers, members of the UK’s parliaments and senior civil servants on techUK’s work advocating for the role of technology in the UK’s economy as well as wider society.
Alice joined techUK in 2022. She has experience working at both a political monitoring company, leading on the tech, media and telecoms portfolio there, and also as an account manager in a Westminster-based public affairs agency. She has a degree from the University of Sheffield in Politics and Philosophy.
Antony Walker is deputy CEO of techUK, which he played a lead role in launching in November 2013.
Antony is a member of the senior leadership team and has overall responsibility for techUK’s policy work. Prior to his appointment in July 2012 Antony was chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), the UK’s independent advisory group on broadband policy. Antony was closely involved in the development of broadband policy development in the UK since the BSG was established in 2001 and authored several major reports to government. He also led the development of the UK’s world leading Open Internet Code of Practice that addresses the issue of net neutrality in the UK. Prior to setting up the BSG, Antony spent six years working in Brussels for the American Chamber of Commerce following and writing about telecoms issues and as a consultant working on EU social affairs and environmental issues. Antony is a graduate of Aberdeen University and KU Leuven and is also a Policy Fellow Alumni of the Centre for Science and Policy at Cambridge University.
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