Meta calls for parental control laws for under-16s
- Meta has called for laws that would force app stores to get parental approval when a child downloads an app.
- The proposal would put app stores, like those run by Apple and Google, on the hook for implementing parental controls – rather than social media companies.
- The firm’s safety chief called for a “simple, industry-wide solution” to govern children’s social media use.
- Meta’s global head of safety, Antigone Davis reported: “Parents should approve their teen’s app downloads, and we support federal legislation that requires app stores to get parents’ approval whenever their teens under 16 download apps,”
- Ms Davis also said that placing the responsibility for parental controls on app stores would “help to preserve privacy” by limiting how many individual companies collected “potentially sensitive identifying information”.
- For more, please visit the BBC News website.
Sextortion: ‘I sent a nude and was blackmailed for money’
- A 15-year-old boy said he feared his life would be ruined after falling victim to a sextortion scam.
- He was sent intimate photographs of a girl he thought he was speaking to online and sent nude pictures in return.
- Scammers then asked him for money and threatened to leak the images online.
- Police have warned teenage lives could be lost due to the rising number of sextortion cases.
- According to North Wales Police, anyone can be a victim, typically teenage boys who are targeted with some as young as 13.
- Hayley Laskey from the Revenge Porn Helpline stated: “We need to take the stigma away of victim blaming. It’s not your fault, it’s theirs.”
- For more on the article, please visit the BBC News website.
- For more information you can visit INEQE’s Protecting Young People from Sextortion article.
School strikes: Closures and disruption as non-teaching staff walk out
- Schools across Northern Ireland are facing major disruption and possible closures as thousands of non-teaching staff go on strike.
- A representative from one union, reported that 15,000 to 20,000 are expected to take part in the action.
- The Department of Education have said it cannot afford to increase wages on its current budget.
- Raymond McFeeters, principal of Ardnashee Special School and College in Londonderry, said classroom assistants are “amazing” but feel “undervalued”.
- Unison’s lead negotiator for education, Anne Speed, said that the “cuts to the education budget…have not only obstructed settlement of this issue, these cuts have drastically reduced or eliminated support services to pupils”.
- For more, please visit the BBC News website.
