The U.S. Senate has passed the Kids Online Safety Act, a series of new measures to protect children from harmful content on the internet.<\/p>\n
The legislation, which now must pass the House of Representatives, applies to apps, websites and social networks that are likely to be used by minors. It requires platforms to take “reasonable measures” to protect minors from online harm.<\/p>\n
The measures also require settings that restrict access to minors’ personal data. Further, parents and caregivers need to be provided with tools to supervise a child’s use of a service, including privacy and account settings. In addition, platforms must disclose details of personalized recommendation systems and individual-specific advertising to minors; allow users and caregivers to report safety concerns; prevent the advertising of age-restricted products or services to minors; and report every year on “foreseeable risks of harm to minors from using the platform.”<\/p>\n
In addition, the legislation requires large platforms\u2014a determination based on revenue, employment or size of user database\u2014to provide users with notice of content-recommendation algorithms. It also includes the commission of a study from the National Academy of Sciences on social media and the risk of harm to minors.<\/p>\n
Responding to the legislation, Vikrant Mathur, co-founder of Future Today, which operates the HappyKids app, commented, “As an industry, we need to create more safe spaces for kids to engage and learn while ensuring that the law continues to support the various business models that the publishers can use to create long-lasting services; these proposed enhancements to COPPA seem like a reasonable step in that direction.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Senate has passed the Kids Online Safety Act, a series of new measures to protect children from harmful content on the internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":28023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[9801,9802],"class_list":["post-28022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-kids-online-safety-act","tag-kosa","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n