The Guardian View On Online Child Protection: The Web Needs More Health And Safety

When writing a history of social media, you should include a chapter on whistleblowers who played an important role in gaining public scrutiny. In 2021, Frances Haugen, who worked at Facebook (now Meta), published a study revealing Instagram's harmful effects on children. Last year, another former Arturo Behar employee testified before Congress about the sexual harassment his daughter suffered on the platform. The engineer's work is part of a lawsuit against the company brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres.

It follows a Guardian investigation into online sex trafficking last year. The meta was found to fail to report or even identify the extent of online child prostitution exploitation. Company documents show that every day around 100,000 children, mostly girls, are sexually harassed on Facebook and Instagram. Experts warn that job cuts at Meta and other companies, especially in the mid-level and security groups, will make solving these problems even more difficult. Last week, Bejar told the Guardian that Meta had denied knowing about the death of British teenager Molly Russell, whose decision to take her own life in 2017 was influenced by material she had seen about suicide and self-harm.

Mr. Torres accuses Meta of allowing adults to text and babysit. Other recently discovered evidence includes complaints from advertisers about potentially illegal content. Meta denies it is a child predator market. But given the growing evidence of various kinds of online harm – harm that coexists with the benefits of technology – it's hard to deny that the regulatory framework over the past two decades has been disastrously weak. Early examples include a 1996 ruling that online platforms should be free of publisher obligations (something President Joe Biden said should be reversed) and the establishment of 13 as the default age for opening accounts. A particular problem in the United States is that the law prevents police from investigating reports of objectionable AI-generated content until they have been verified by the companies. As Beban Kidran, a British internet security activist, has often pointed out, this is a built environment not built for security. AI-powered deepfakes create new risks.

Thanks in part to pressure from civil society, including 5 Rights, the NSPCC and Ian Russell, Molly's father, the UK will have some of the strictest regulations in the world when the Online Harm Act comes into effect. But this has not yet happened and Labor believes the law should be further strengthened. Meanwhile, a cross-party parliamentary group on tackling commercial sexual exploitation has called for stricter age controls and the introduction of a new criminal offense for distributing child pornography online - an area where the Spanish government is also evaluating legislation.

As in many areas of human activity (such as streets and drug use), there is a trade-off between freedom and security. But whistleblowers and other critics say the extent to which online companies ignore children's well-being is unacceptable, especially as evidence of links between online and offline sexual abuse mounts. Mr. Bejar must be listened to. The enormous wealth of Meta, Twitter/X, Google and other Internet giants should increase, not decrease, their responsibility to society.

The camera records the meeting with the CPS