Category Archives: Consent

Failures of contingency planning worsened by delay

Posted on May 18, 2020 by

UK Children’s organizations have written a letter of protest to the Government. The media have covered in some detail certain headline failures of contingency planning in relation to Covid-19 and lockdown. Less well remarked has been the failure of contingency … Continue reading →

Posted in Age verification, Consent, Default settings, E-commerce, Facebook, Google, Privacy, Regulation, Self-regulation

Companies behaving like states

Posted on March 10, 2020 by

Tech companies and Governments between them created the crisis of confidence that is said to be stimulating the demand for greater online privacy protection. Yet they are now lining up on opposite ends of the argument about how to address … Continue reading →

Posted in Consent, Internet governance, Regulation, Self-regulation

A big step with bigger implications

Posted on January 24, 2020 by

Earlier this week the British media were full of reports of the “Age Appropriate Design Code”. It had just been published by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s  data protection authority. The Code’s provisions are likely to become fully … Continue reading →

Posted in Age verification, Consent, Privacy, Regulation, Self-regulation

Something to think about

Posted on August 20, 2019 by

All of the early thinking about the internet – thinking which determined how it was set up at a fairly fundamental level – was framed by a belief that overwhelmingly the future users would be highly educated, therefore literate and … Continue reading →

Posted in Advertising, Age verification, Consent, Default settings, E-commerce, Internet governance, Privacy, Regulation, Self-regulation

Facebook, Google and data about porn

Posted on July 29, 2019 by

Facebook and Google have very strict rules about porn. Essentially it is banned from both platforms. Here is what Google says Sexually Explicit Material “Do not distribute sexually explicit or pornographic material. Do not drive traffic to commercial pornography sites”. … Continue reading →

Posted in Age verification, Consent, E-commerce, Facebook, Google, Internet governance, Pornography, Privacy, Regulation, Uncategorized

A child’s right to human dignity and privacy

Posted on July 1, 2019 by

Companies that deploy tools such as PhotoDNA to detect, delete and report child sex abuse material deserve a round of applause, but I am not sure how intense or prolonged the applause should be. We live in a strange world … Continue reading →

Posted in Child abuse images, Consent, E-commerce, Regulation, Self-regulation

The only show in town

Posted on May 11, 2019 by

Recently I took part in a couple of events attended by high level professional child welfare and child development experts from across Europe, EU and non-EU. A great crowd. I thought I spotted someone at the second event whom I … Continue reading →

Posted in Consent, Default settings, Facebook, Google, Internet governance, Privacy, Regulation, Self-regulation