The online business has been put on notice by Australia’s eSafety Commission, which has given them until the end of the month to develop a plan to shield kids from pornography.
By October 3, important decision-makers must develop legally binding guidelines to shield young children from gruesome content, including suicide, porn, and serious disease.
Social media platforms, app stores, websites, search engines, multiplayer video games, and online dating services would all be covered by the regulations.
According to eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, children are typically accidentally introduced to pornography at a younger age, with an average age of 13.
“We know kids will always be curious and will likely seek out porn as they enter adolescence and explore their sexuality, so, many of these measures are really focused on preventing unintentional exposure to young children,” she stated.
Sixty percent of young people tell us they were exposed to pornography on social media, so it’s not simply porn sites we are talking about.
“This exposure occurred on well-known platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat and was frequently unintentional.
“The last thing anyone wants is children seeing violent or extreme pornography without guidance, context or the appropriate maturity levels because they may think that a video showing a man aggressively choking a woman during sex on a porn site is what consent, sex and healthy relationships should look like.”
Parental controls, age limitations, and default safety features are examples of possible codes. Industry associations have deadlines of October 3 for draft codes and December 19 for final codes.
Additionally, a public consultation has to be held.
“We want industry to succeed here and we will work with them to help them come up with codes that provide meaningful protections for children,” Grant stated.
“However, if any code should fall short, under the Online Safety Act I have the power to set the rules for them by moving to standards.”
The deadline aligns with the federal government’s goal of shielding kids from offensive content on the internet, which was sparked by the approval of an online age verification trial in this year’s federal budget.
