Tiktok, Snapchat, Meta and Google participated in Wednesday's meeting along with Bris, Child X, Ecpat and the Swedish Equality Authority. The background was a new Bris report showing that almost one in five children felt unsafe online and that many believe it would be safer if companies took greater responsibility.
"It's yet another report that shows the complete vulnerability that many young girls and children in general are exposed to online," says Nina Larsson (L).
Serious crimes
The meeting only lasted an hour, but was, according to her, "very good."
It became clear that there is an extremely widespread occurrence of serious crimes. The civil society organizations explained that it is a widespread problem, that it creeps down with age and that what they are exposed to is becoming increasingly serious.
The companies are doing too little, and if they wanted to, they could take further action immediately, says Larsson.
Did they make any promises?
I feel they are keen to improve the situation, but I don't think their commitment to the issue matches the scale of the problem. They need to do much more and could act much faster.
Problems on Snapchat
According to Nina Larsson, some of the companies admitted that there are problems on the platforms.
For example, Snapchat clearly highlighted that there is a problem and that they have more to do.
During the meeting, discussions included better controls for age verification, a current topic since the government appointed an inquiry earlier this fall into the issue of introducing age limits on social media.
It was clear from the companies that such tools exist and that they are already working on them today. So it is clear that we will move forward with this legislatively, I see no obstacles to it, on the contrary, I was strengthened in that opinion.
TT has contacted the meeting participants. Sara Övreby, social policy manager at Google in Sweden, writes in a comment that it was a constructive meeting.
"From Google, I shared all the work we do to develop and offer age-appropriate solutions. We also talked about the technology we develop and share to detect child abuse material."
