Google is trying to strengthen the safety of minors on the Internet, with measures on personal data and potentially inappropriate content, said Tuesday the Internet giant, whose YouTube platform is regularly in the crosshairs of the authorities responsible for the protection of children. .
“As young people spend more and more time online, parents, teachers, privacy and security experts, and policy makers are rightly looking for ways to make children’s Internet surfing more enjoyable. And teens, “Mindy Brooks, general manager of Google’s” Children and Families “division, said in a statement.
“We are in regular contact with them to constantly adapt our products and our monitoring tools to the young public.” On the ultra popular YouTube, videos uploaded by teens ages 13-17 will be in “private” mode by default. If the option is not disabled, the videos can only be viewed by users chosen by the author. These minors or their parents will now also be able to request removal of their images from Google image search results.
The issue of removing problematic content in general, from false information to compromising images, at the request of authorities or individuals, is a recurring topic of litigation for the platform. Even on the personal data side, the job history will now remain deactivated, without the possibility of activating it, for all young people under 18 years of age, worldwide. And to protect them from “explicit and inappropriate” content, Google will activate a filter, “SafeSearch”, in the search engine for all minors.
Parents will also soon have “new protections available to prevent explicit content from appearing when a child uses the Google Assistant on shared devices.” Advertisers will no longer have the right to target minors with ads based on their age, gender or interests. Despite strict rules against all content that sexualizes or exploits children, popular youth networks such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube or Instagram are regularly criticized for not sufficiently protecting children from online predators and possible scandals to tarnish their reputation and deprive them. of advertisers’ revenue.