Singapore – The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has issued the ‘Code of Practice for Online Safety’, which mitigates risk of harmful social media content to Singaporeans, especially to children. In addition, the new code has also instructed platforms to not serve advertisements to accounts owned by children.
The categories of harmful content covered by the code are: sexual content, violent content, suicide and self-harm content, cyberbullying content, content endangering public health, and content facilitating vice and organised crime.
Through the new safety code, IMDA has ordered online platforms to apply age-appropriate policies to accounts belonging to children, including having a set of community guidelines appropriate for children, content moderation, and online safety information that children can easily understand.
Moreover, local users will be empowered with tools to manage their own safety. These may include tools to hide harmful content and unwanted interactions, limit location sharing and the visibility of their accounts from other users.
“Tackling the threat of harmful online content is a global issue which requires a whole-of-society effort. The Singapore Government has strengthened our regulatory framework and will continue its efforts in ensuring that regulatory and public education measures can address the growing range of harmful online content and protect Singapore users against online harms. IMDA will continue to work closely with SMSs to enhance Singapore’s Online Safety,” IMDA said in a statement.
