UK opposition calls for better online protections for children – Reuters

LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) – Britain’s opposition Labour Party has called on the government to enact its long-delayed Online Safety Bill, after Reuters revealed how few underage children Snap Inc (SNAP.N) had removed from its Snapchat platform.Britain, like other countries and the European Union, has been grappling with how to protect social media users, and in particular children, from harmful content without damaging free speech.On Friday, Reuters reported that Snapchat was removing only dozens of children in Britain from its platform each month, compared with tens of thousands blocked by rival TikTok.”Parents are crying out for better protections for children online and especially on social media,” said Lucy Powell, Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in a statement issued in response to Reuters’ report.Latest UpdatesView 2 more stories “The Government has delayed and now watered down the online safety bill, relying almost entirely on age verification technologies which aren’t fool proof, when we know that many children pass themselves off as older online.”Powell added that the British government needs to strengthen the bill to “take on the algorithms and business models of platforms which promote harm and fail to protect children.”According to the data shared with
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