In 2020, more than 1 million child abuse reports were received in 27 countries around the world. Although these harassment incidents are physically prevented, unfortunately, child abuse continues to increase in the internet environment. It is getting harder and harder to prevent these ‘online harassment’ incidents, which increased by 67% with the pandemic.
Wanting to put a stop to these increasing harassment cases, the European Union Commission has asked Google and Meta to find and delete content and conversations containing harassment and child pornography. Stating that companies that do not remove these contents will confiscate 6% of their annual income, EU officials stated that everything necessary must be done for this to happen. Google and Meta officials, on the other hand, expressed their concerns about this situation.
End-to-end encryption may be a thing of the past!
This system, which was mentioned in the draft law published today, will replace the system previously named ‘Voluntary detection and notification’. According to this system, Google and Meta will detect and block child abuse and pornographic content, if necessary, ignoring user privacy. In the published draft law, “The proposed rules make it mandatory for online service providers to detect and remove risky content (child molestation and pornography) in their systems.’ words were included.
WhatsApp, the sub-company of Meta, which will be affected by the system, announced that they were hesitant of this decision. “It’s really disappointing that EU regulations ignore end-to-end encryption,” said Will Carthcart, executive director of the popular messaging app, in a tweet. A spokesperson for Meta
said, “We plan to maintain end-to-end encryption of users’ messages and information while enforcing these sanctions. End-to-end encryption ensures that the information of billions of people, including children, is protected.” He said that necessary steps will be taken.
In order for the draft law to become law, EU countries must support this decision and enact it jointly.
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