Ofcom’s Aim To Reset The Net To Make It Safe Faces Challenges

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“A major reset of the internet to make it much safer” is how Ofcom’s Gill Whitehead described the communications watchdog’s child safety announcements to me.But can it really deliver that kind of a sea-change in the protection of children online?Turning faulty tech off then on again is a tried and trusted fix, but “resetting the net” is considerably more challenging.

First of all, consider the scale of the task: while the focus is on the largest and riskiest social media firms, over 150,000 services fall under the Online Safety Act, the new law Ofcom must enforce. According to Ms Whitehead, the big tech firms are already taking action. She pointed to measures by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta to combat grooming, and steps taken by streaming site Twitch, owned by Amazon, to stop underage users seeing “mature” content. But the problem goes much wider than that….Story continues…