The IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) is a UK-based organization, which is trying to make the internet children safe platform. They have introduced a set of 11 measurements, which were drafted by the Five Country Partners comprising the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and the USA. Tech firms should follow these principles to ensure children are not sexually exploited on their platforms:
- Prevent known child sexual abuse material
- Identify and combat:
- the dissemination of new child sexual abuse
- preparatory child sexual exploitation and abuse activity (ex. online grooming)
- advertising, recruiting, soliciting, or procuring a child for sexual exploitation or abuse
- the use of live streaming services for child sexual exploitation and abuse
- Prevent automatic suggestions and search results from surfacing child sexual exploitation and abuse
- Adopt safety measures from peers or adults seeking to engage in harmful sexual activity
- Provide on material with appropriate context and confirmation may be connected to child sexual exploitation and abuse.
- Share relevant expertise, helpful practices, data, and tools
- Regularly publish or share meaningful data and insights on their efforts
- Take a global approach to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse
Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Snap and Roblox, which IWF members, are endorsing these principles. As CEO Susie Hargreaves says, that after the companies joining the IWF, they make a voluntary commitment to do all that they can to keep their customers safe and remove this abhorrent content as quickly as possible. Also taking these measurements, officials believe that we will be able to protect from sick pedophiles and predators who lurk in the shadows of the web.
