eta and gaming platform Roblox have agreed to strengthen child-safety protections for Philippine users, Information and Communications Technology Secretary Henry Aguda said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The measures include age-verification, parental controls, faster takedowns of harmful content and closer cooperation with law enforcement, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The commitments were made during meetings between Philippine officials and executives of Meta and Roblox in Singapore, Aguda told Reuters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meta and Roblox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The agreement came a day after Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion\u00a0over the next decade and impose new safeguards for teenage users in the United States, including usage limits, parental controls and stronger age-assurance measures, to settle claims by US states that its platforms harmed children.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the talks, Aguda said the US settlement would “boost” discussions with Meta on child safety and platform accountability.<\/p>\n
“Both agreed to the safety protocols that we requested,” including locating their office in the Philippines, providing age verification, cooperating with law enforcement, faster takedown of content, Aguda said in a phone interview after the meetings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Roblox is aiming to establish a Philippine office as early as October, Aguda said, while Meta would send a team to\u00a0Manila\u00a0to discuss a timeline for expanding its presence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The talks come as Philippine lawmakers consider measures to tighten protections for minors online, including proposals that would restrict or ban children’s access to social media.<\/p>\n
Calls for stronger regulation intensified after a fatal shooting\u00a0at a university in the southern Philippines last week, with officials saying a student livestreamed the attack, and following a separate incident of school violence\u00a0in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Philippine officials have increasingly linked concerns over youth safety, online harms and social media platforms to the broader debate over regulation of minors’ access to digital services.<\/p>\n
Aguda said Meta and Roblox also agreed to engage with legislators as Congress considers online safety measures.<\/p>\n
Asked whether the companies were open to a potential social media ban for minors, Aguda said they have indicated they would cooperate with whatever policy Philippine lawmakers ultimately adopt.<\/p>\n
The historic settlement between Meta and dozens of US states could be just the start of a wave that will ripple across the social media industry, putting TikTok, YouTube and Snap under pressure to make similar changes to their apps for teens.<\/p>\n
Parts of the settlement hinge on whether those three companies, referred to as “Core Industry Members” in a legal filing, take similar action.<\/p>\n
It’s “the right path forward for our whole industry, but this framework will only work if all our peers join us,” Meta Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"eta and gaming platform Roblox have agreed to strengthen child-safety protections for Philippine users, Information and Communications Technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[154],"tags":[18235,51882,618,994,94102,17864],"class_list":["post-210183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-zuckerberg","tag-asean","tag-child-safety","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta","tag-philippine","tag-roblox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117196731449772587","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}