LONDON — The U.K.’s Conservative government today reversed a longstanding position by vowing to “crack down on porn sites,” and selectively enforce controversial legislation by targeting four high-profile tube sites, including Pornhub and xHamster.
Previously, the Information Commissioner’s Office had established as policy that online services intended for adults were not subject to the Age Appropriate Design Code, also known as the “Children’s Code,” a set of rules that “guide how the UK Data Protection Act should be applied to digital services for children,” Bloomberg reported.
The ICO is currently headed by a conservative lawyer from New Zealand, John Edwards, who previously served as his home country’s privacy commissioner.
The Times described Edwards as “a vocal critic of social media,” noting that he once called Facebook “morally bankrupt pathological liars.”
Under Edwards, Bloomberg explained, the ICO “has pledged to crack down on porn sites and other adult-only services to ensure they are taking steps, such as verifying users’ ages, to prevent children’s access.”
The ICO informed the press about the surprising policy reversal by the beleaguered Tory government, currently without clear leadership since Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation over a variety of controversies.
The Baroness Kidron's 'Children's Code'
As XBIZ reported, the “Children’s Code” was drafted by a former film director and British noblewoman, the Baroness Beeban Kidron, who recently succeeded in exporting her vague-yet-strict notions of putting “guard rails” and “safety belts” on the internet to the California legislature in the form of a new age verification bill.
Kidron is a 62-year-old former photographer, film producer and director, philanthropist and self-appointed “advocate for children's rights in the digital world.” She has founded and chairs charities the 5Rights Foundation and Into Film. She is an unelected “life peer,” legislating in the U.K. as a member of the House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee.
Today, Edwards’ ICO announced that it is expanding deployment of the Children's Code, following “a challenge from eleven civil society groups in December 2021,” Bloomberg reported. “Those groups, including the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, and CHIS, argued that the wording of the code covers all services ‘likely to be accessed’ by children and not just services aimed at children. The groups said that allowing children to access adult-only services poses data protection harms in addition to content harms.”
“We have revised our position,” Edwards said today. “We now accept that if there are a significant number of children accessing the sites they are in the aegis of the code.”
Selective Threat to Specific 'Porn Sites'
The ICO has said that it will specifically target “adult-only services,” starting with Pornhub and xHamster, to “make it clear that they must comply with the code by preventing children’s access.”
According to Bloomberg, Edwards said that “if a company can show their services are not accessed by a significant number of children, they would not be subject to the code.”
As of now, neither Edwards nor the ICO nor the Children’s Code has spelled out what threshold marks a “significant” number of children, or what method should be used to ascertain such a number.
The ICO additionally stated that “it has been investigating four companies for non-compliance with the code, and auditing an additional nine,” Bloomberg reported. “A spokeswoman declined to name any of the 13 companies.”
Edwards claimed that he had worked with mainstream platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Google to “make voluntary changes to children’s accounts to comply with the code,” with the result that “children are better protected online in 2022 than they were in 2021.”
Edwards pointedly left out Twitter and Reddit, which still tolerate adult content and have been targets of War on Porn crusaders pressuring the companies to censor what they consider “pornography.”
Main Image: U.K.’s Information Commissioner John Edwards