Sulake with EU to improve the internet for kids

[Michael]

CEOs and senior board members from the world's digital, media and tech companies have met in Brussels to report directly to Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes on how they are making the internet a better, and safer, place for kids, through the work of the CEO Coalition set up by the Vice-President at the end of 2011.

Children now go online at very young ages, and the CEO Coalition has been working on: strong, simple reporting tools for users who experience problems; a choice of age-appropriate privacy setting; wider use of content classification so users and their parents know what to expect while surfing online; wider availability and use of parental controls; and more effective takedown systems for child sexual abuse material.

Speaking in the meeting, CEOs repeated the message that when children's issues are concerned, it is co-operation and not competition that counts. They set out a number of areas for further collaboration:

- Sharing all their educational material via an online platform so that material produced by one company can be reused, free-of-charge, by any other organisation throughout the EU
- Developing a common branding or logo for initiatives across Europe, to scale up efforts and maximise awareness
- Involving the hundreds of thousands of people who work for Coalition companies in education and outreach to children. This includes through encouraging staff to talk about how to be safe online in their children's schools.
- Working together to raise awareness amongst parents
- Broadening best practices beyond the Coalition, to join forces across the whole Internet

- http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-504_en.htm

Attendees: 31 members of the CEO coalition including Apple, BSkyB, BT, Dailymotion, Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, France Telecom - Orange, Google, Hyves, KPN, Liberty Global, LG Electronics, Mediaset, Microsoft, Netlog, Nintendo, Nokia, Opera Software, Research In Motion, RTL Group, Samsung, Skyrock, Stardoll, Sulake, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Telecom Italia, Telenor Group, Tuenti, Vivendi and Vodafone.

This is what the new Sulake CEO thinks about it all:

[Special]

sounds like a lot of drivel, there's always going to be perverts & dangerous people online nothing they do can stop it

[e5]

Yeah but precautions can be put it place to help contain it

sounds like a lot of drivel, there's always going to be perverts & dangerous people online nothing they do can stop it

[Daltron]

This guy sounds very well spoken, a far better CEO than Pa.. not even worth my typing. Interesting that Sulake is going to the CEO thing with the likes of Apple and Facebook!

[Tyrell]

Unless they're going to put on a proper filter that I can turn off, I'm not interested.

[-:Undertaker:-]

Sulake with it's fantastic customer service and the EU (being competent as we all know) - it's an unstoppable force that will for sure make the internet a better place.

[Negativities]

THEY NEED TO GET TO MY DAMN CUSTOMER SERVICE TICKET ALREADY! Lol.

That should be their top priority.

[CrazyColaist]

I'm just happy that sulake was included,

[GommeInc]

It's strange that they need to go hand in hand to the EU to discuss what should be an obvious concern. That said, it's almost unavoidable that young children are going to use the internet - the only way to stop any problems would be to alter the way in which the internet works for everyone - which will in time limit, and even remove basic internet freedoms in some respects. From a service point of view, Sulake and Facebook (both similar in terms of security) should alter their security settings to combat young children accessing their services.

I can't help but say "It's the parents fault" or find it is their responsibility to look after and educate their children :/ Microsoft and Apple could do something their operating systems to limit the choices and access their customers' children have on the internet, but then young children are incredibly tech savvy these days. Hence my first statement - it's almost unavoidable.