The annual report evaluated six social media services \u2013 Facebook, HardwareZone, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube \u2013 on how thoroughly and effectively their measures met the Code of Practice for Online Safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It also raised concerns about child safety, noting that children could still access age-inappropriate content on several platforms.<\/p>\n
Mrs Teo said age assurance measures to better verify users’ ages online will be implemented as part of enhancements to the online safety regulations.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to be able to tell quite accurately the age of the user, in order for whatever protections you intend to apply to them, to be actually made available,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Additional safeguards under consideration include tighter controls on platform features such as direct messaging and autoplay, which may expose users, especially youths, to harmful interactions or excessive use.<\/p>\n
Mrs Teo added that authorities are prepared to take stronger action if platforms fail to meet safety standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a particular service, just like a particular make of a car, is not safe to use, you must seriously then think about taking it off, and so that’s the kind of approach that we are prepared to take.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would have to look at the specific design of the service, we would have to look specifically at the kind of child safety features that can be introduced and then we will assess.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we need to take this vehicle off the road, we may have to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At the same time, she acknowledged the complexities of regulation, including challenges such as migration to other platforms and difficulties in enforcing age-based restrictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The annual report evaluated six social media services \u2013 Facebook, HardwareZone, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube \u2013 on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[363,134,188362,111,139,556,69,1414],"class_list":{"0":"post-356348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mddi","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nutrition","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-social-media"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}