Child-safe internet

兒童安全網(wǎng)絡

The kids aren’t alright

孩子們?nèi)孕鑾椭?/p>

NEW YORK

Politicians and regulators want to protect children on social media. About time

政客和監(jiān)管機構希望保護社交媒體上的兒童。從時間方面

IN MARCH AND April Jim Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, a children’s advocacy group, badgered members of America’s Congress to regulate the apps children are using online. Their response on Capitol Hill shocked him. “We already regulated Nickelodeon, Disney channel and PBS Kids,” they replied, referring to rules for television enacted in the 1990s and 2000s (with his help). They had apparently missed a series of recent scandals: children exposed to violence and pornography, their data being collected, paedophiles lurking in comments sections of videos depicting youngsters. “We’re changing at warp speed,” Mr Steyer says, “and we’re still talking about ‘Sesame Street’.”

今年3月和4月，兒童權益倡導組織常識媒體(Common Sense Media)的創(chuàng)始人吉姆?斯泰爾(Jim Steyer)曾要求美國國會議員對兒童在網(wǎng)上使用的應用程序進行監(jiān)管。國會的反應令他震驚?！拔覀円呀?jīng)對尼克國際兒童頻道(Nickelodeon)、迪士尼頻道(Disney channel)和PBS兒童頻道(PBS Kids)進行了監(jiān)管，”他們參考這90年代至20世紀初制定的電視媒體相關的法律條文回答道。他們顯然錯過了最近的一系列丑聞:兒童接觸暴力和色情，他們的數(shù)據(jù)被收集，戀童癖者潛伏在描述青少年的視頻評論區(qū)。“我們正在以驚人的速度改變，”斯蒂爾表示，“我們?nèi)栽谡務摗吨ヂ榻帧?Sesame Street)——美國的一款面向兒童的具有教育性的節(jié)目。”

詞匯

Advocacy/主張；擁護；辯護

Badger/糾纏不休；吵著要；煩擾

Enact/制定，頒布

Pornography/色情文學；色情描寫

Paedophiles/戀童癖者

Lurk/潛伏；潛藏；埋伏

Not for much longer. Members of Congress are drafting multiple bills to regulate how internet platforms treat children. Britain has proposed child-safety rules, including prohibitions on features designed to keep users hooked. From July it is expected to require porn sites to bar users under 18; MindGeek, which owns many salacious sites, wants to use an age-verification registry in order to comply (and, in doing so, make it easier to charge adult visitors for content). In Delhi politicians are considering rules that could stop the data of anyone under 18 from being collected. The EU bars tech giants from garnering data and targeting ads at children. Last year California adopted similar privacy protections that also forbid tech companies from ignoring users’ actual age. Most of these provisions will be enforced with heavy penalties.

不會太久了。國會議員正在起草多項法案，以規(guī)范互聯(lián)網(wǎng)平臺如何對待兒童。英國提出了兒童安全規(guī)定，包括禁止使用旨在讓用戶上癮的功能。預計從7月起，色情網(wǎng)站將禁止18歲以下的用戶進入;擁有許多色情網(wǎng)站的MindGeek，想要使用年齡驗證注冊表來遵守(這樣做，可以更容易地向成人訪問者收取內(nèi)容費用)。在德里，政客們正在考慮制定規(guī)則，禁止收集任何未滿18歲的人的數(shù)據(jù)。歐盟禁止科技巨頭收集數(shù)據(jù)和針對兒童的廣告。去年，加州也采取了類似的隱私保護措施，禁止科技公司忽視用戶的實際年齡。這些規(guī)定大部分將以重罰執(zhí)行。

詞匯

Salacious/ ?好色的；猥褻的；淫蕩的

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In the 1980s and 1990s public officials in America worried about what shows and advertisements children were being exposed to on TV. The Children’s Television Act of 1990 and subsequent regulations limited the number of commercials interrupting children’s shows and required that television stations provide educational programming for children.

在20世紀80年代和90年代，美國的政府官員擔心孩子們在電視上看到的節(jié)目和廣告。1990年的《兒童電視法》及其后的條例限制了打斷兒童節(jié)目的廣告的數(shù)量，并要求電視臺為兒童提供教育節(jié)目。

Compared with that concern, politicians and regulators have treated online video services like YouTube (owned by Google) with insouciance verging on neglect. Today children and teenagers are exposed to much dodgier fare in cyberspace than they were in the 1990s on broadcast TV—at the touch of a fingertip on their (or their parents’) iPad or smartphone. Teens run into white nationalists. Ten-year-olds encounter flat-earthers. Toddlers stumble on violent, scary or pornographic content. In comments attached to YouTube videos featuring children, molesters identify the parts they liked most, with time stamps to alert others with similar inclinations.

與這種擔憂相比，政客和監(jiān)管機構對YouTube(谷歌所有)等在線視頻服務漠不關心，近乎忽視。如今，兒童和青少年在網(wǎng)絡上比上世紀90年代在廣播電視上接觸到的要危險得多——只需用指尖觸碰他們(或他們父母的)iPad或智能手機。青少年遇到白人民族主義者。十多歲的孩子就會遇到各種頑固分子。蹣跚學步的孩子不經(jīng)意瞥見暴力、恐怖或色情內(nèi)容。在YouTube上有關兒童的視頻的評論中，性騷擾者指出了他們最喜歡的部分，并附上了時間戳，以提醒其他有類似傾向的人。

詞匯

Insouciance/無憂無慮；漫不經(jīng)心；滿不在乎

Verging/邊緣

flat-earthers/字面解釋為那些堅持“地球是平面的”之說的人，意指“頑固分子”。

Dodgy/狡猾的，逃避的；善于騙人的；

Toddler/學步的小孩

Molester/?猥褻者；性騷擾者

Inclination/傾向，愛好；斜坡

In 2018 the Pew Research Centre found that 61% of American parents who let their offspring watch YouTube reported that the children come across unsuitable content. Youngsters are also easily manipulated, critics say, by “l(fā)ike” and “share” buttons, which may induce social anxiety and infringe on privacy.

2018年，皮尤研究中心(Pew Research center)發(fā)現(xiàn)，61%讓子女觀看YouTube視頻的美國父母稱，孩子們有看到不合適內(nèi)容。批評人士稱，年輕人也很容易被“喜歡”和“分享”按鈕控制，這可能會引發(fā)社交焦慮，侵犯隱私。

詞匯

Manipulate/操縱；操作

It would help matters if social-media companies worked out ways to divert children to stripped-down versions of their services without targeted ads and certain features—Instagram without a “l(fā)ike” button, YouTube without autoplay or comments. YouTube has a separate app, YouTube Kids—but most parents have not heard of it. On May 22nd SuperAwesome, a British company that provides software for children’s apps, announced that it had developed a tool, KidSwitch, which can recognise with a high degree of confidence when a child is using an app.

如果社交媒體公司能想出辦法，讓孩子們轉(zhuǎn)向沒有針對性廣告和特定功能的精簡版服務——instagram沒有“喜歡”按鈕，YouTube沒有自動播放或評論，這將會有所幫助。YouTube有一個單獨的應用程序YouTube kids，但大多數(shù)家長都沒有聽說過。5月22日，一家為兒童應用程序提供軟件的英國公司SuperAwesome宣布，他們已經(jīng)開發(fā)出一種名為KidSwitch的工具，當孩子在使用應用程序時，它可以以非常高的可信度地識別出。

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The social-media giants, with their algorithms and rich stores of data, should be able to sniff out at least the very young. So far, most have merely repeated that children under 13 are not supposed to be using them without parental permission. That official posture is meant to shield them from liability for harvesting children’s data without parental consent, which is prohibited under existing law.

社交媒體巨頭擁有自己的算法和豐富的數(shù)據(jù)存儲，應該至少能夠識別出那些非常年輕的人。到目前為止，大多數(shù)人只是反復強調(diào)，13歲以下的孩子不應該在沒有父母許可的情況下使用這些設備。這一官方立場是為了使他們免于在未經(jīng)父母同意的情況下收集兒童數(shù)據(jù)的責任，這是現(xiàn)行法律所禁止的。

The Federal Trade Commission, an American regulator, has received complaints against Facebook (which owns Instagram), YouTube and TikTok, a popular Chinese-owned video-sharing app, alleging that they collected data from children under 13. In February TikTok agreed to pay a fine of $5.7m, said it would take down any videos uploaded by children under 13, and pledged to limit the app’s functions for these young users.

美國監(jiān)管機構聯(lián)邦貿(mào)易委員會(Federal Trade Commission)已經(jīng)收到了針對Facebook(擁有Instagram)、YouTube和TikTok（抖音）的投訴，后者是一款頗受歡迎的中國視頻分享應用，聲稱他們收集了13歲以下兒童的數(shù)據(jù)。今年2月，TikTok同意支付570萬美元的罰款，并表示將刪除13歲以下兒童上傳的任何視頻，并承諾限制該應用對這些年輕用戶的功能。

Data-privacy rules aside, it has mostly been up to social-media companies to regulate other aspects of their operations themselves. They can restrict content as they please, but have only done so in the glare of scrutiny, after journalists or activists shed light on problems. (In February YouTube largely banned comments on videos featuring children.) Without the threat of severe penalties, the platforms have had little financial incentive to change. MIDiA, a consultancy, estimates that in 2017 children’s channels accounted for 17% of YouTube views, and 15% of revenues, or $2.1bn.

撇開數(shù)據(jù)隱私規(guī)則不談，社交媒體公司自己監(jiān)管運營的其他方面基本上是他們的責任。他們可以按其所想地限制內(nèi)容，但只有在記者或活動人士揭露問題后，他們才會在眾目睽睽之下認真審核限制內(nèi)容。(今年2月，YouTube基本上禁止對兒童視頻發(fā)表評論。)由于沒有受到嚴厲懲罰的威脅，這些平臺幾乎沒有改變的經(jīng)濟動機。咨詢公司MIDiA估計，2017年，兒童頻道占YouTube訪問量的17%，營收的15%(21億美元)。

詞匯

Scrutiny/詳細審查；監(jiān)視

The threat is now materialising. In June Ed Markey, a senator from Massachusetts, is expected to introduce a sweeping child-protection bill, the “KIDS Act”. It would ban continuous “autoplay” on video sites and certain social features, set standards for content and restrict advertising. It would, in other words, be the internet era’s equivalent of the Children’s Television Act, which Mr Markey helped pass as a young congressman. As Mr Steyer says: “To a child a screen is a screen is a screen.”

這種威脅（指對于網(wǎng)絡媒體，尤其是視頻網(wǎng)站的監(jiān)管監(jiān)控）現(xiàn)在正在成為現(xiàn)實。6月，馬薩諸塞州參議員Ed Markey有望提出一項全面的兒童保護法案——“兒童法案”。它將禁止在視頻網(wǎng)站和某些社交功能上持續(xù)“自動播放”，為內(nèi)容設定標準，并限制廣告。換句話說，它將成為互聯(lián)網(wǎng)時代的“兒童電視法案”(Children’s Television Act)，由馬基先生這位年起的議員批準通過。正如斯蒂爾所言:“對孩子來說，屏幕就是屏幕?！?/p>

詞匯

Materialize/物質(zhì)化，突然出現(xiàn)