Don't make big tech take children's data too

By Rowland Manthorpe, technology correspondent

Sometimes, for brief moments, I feel sorry for tech companies.

As the Political mood turns from "seriously concerned" to "full-blown moral panic", they are being asked to do things they know will cause problems later.

When they try to warn government about the risks of a particular policy, their objections go unheeded. tech executives complain to me that, while ministers listen politely in private, in public they're only interested in the free Political points on offer for anyone who criticises big tech.

After years of cynical disregard for public wellbeing, it's difficult not to feel the tech companies deserve this kind of treatment.

But occasionally - hard as it is to admit - their warnings are correct.

Image:Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube require users to be 13 before creating an account

So it is with age limits online.

Of all the many problems with social media, age is one of the biggest and most persistent. Social networks are, without doubt, adult places - which is why the companies that run them have clearly-defined age limits.

Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube all require users to be 13 before they create an account, as does (since last week). TikTok.

Yet, as any numbers of younger children will happily tell you, getting around this limit is as easy as entering a false birthday in a sign-up form.

To solve this problem, governments have been pushing tech companies to patrol their boundaries more rigorously.

It seems like an easy win: make the platforms, with their immense resources, do the work. In practice, it's likely to prove far harder.

In order to stop a child getting onto a site, you have to know precisely who they are: which, in digital terms, means collecting their data.

Rowland Manthorpe

That's because, in order to stop a child getting onto a site, you have to know precisely who they are: which, in digital terms, means collecting their data.

This might solve the problem of policing what children see online, but it does so at the cost of their privacy.

Worse, it makes the existing data harvesting permanent, because we will be forced to rely on the tech companies to carry on regulating the system. Facebook, Google and Amazon are already worryingly essential to our digital infrastructure. This arrangement will make them indispensable.

Even the data-hungry platforms are wary of the risk. As ever, their reasons are selfish: children don't make them much money, so from their point of view there's little upside. But what really focuses their mind is the downside. Being handed responsibility for every child on the internet is a duty they don't want to have to fulfil.

Still, the government finds the idea hard to resist.

To see how poorly thought-through plans to protect children go astray, take a look at the legislation passed by Matt Hancock requiring age verification for pornography websites.

Image:Having responsibility for every child on the internet is a duty tech companies don't want to fulfil

This twice-delayed plan is so fraught with problems it's hard to know where to start.

There's the fact that it'll be laughably easy to get around.

There's the prudish official distinction between "acceptable" sex and "unacceptable" sex, a digital update on Mary Whitehouse.

There's the fact that social networks - yes, them again - are excluded, despite the fact that Twitter and Reddit are stuffed with pornographic content.

But the biggest problem is the fact that the most widely-used age verification product is likely to be offered - for a fee - by a company with the innocuous name MindGeek.

A firm doesn't mention, literally anywhere on its website, that it's the owner of the world's biggest porn sites, including PornHub, YouPorn and RedTube.

We need a body that is neutral, not commercially motivated, devoted to the public good, and accountable to citizens. In other words, we're looking for government.

Rowland Manthorpe

Setting aside the dodgy reasoning of asking pornographers to protect children from porn, the practical issues are legion.

What will it do to competition if one firm is policing its rivals' users? How can MindGeek be trusted not to connect its database of names and ages with its knowledge of pornographic tastes?

MindGeek assures me that its AgeID system only collects an email address and password, and that all it sees is an age status pass/fail result from a third party. But, after years of seeing tech companies change their privacy policies at the drop of the hat, forgive me if I remain sceptical.

Unless we forget about the idea of age walls altogether, and take the mature view that young people will occasionally come across inappropriate content online, then asking private companies to put up their own walls isn't a long-term solution.

So what is?

We need a body that is neutral, not commercially motivated, devoted to the public good, and accountable to citizens.

Image:Asking private companies to put up their own walls isn't a long-term solution

In other words, we're looking for government.

Yet, just when we need it most, the state is in full-scale retreat.

This week, the National Audit Office published a report into Verify, the scheme which was supposed to be the government's central system for digital identity.

This is exactly the sort of system that could have been used to introduce a porn block, using only the most minimal amount of data to confirm whether or not a user is over 18.

Yet the National Audit Office found Verify beset with problems. Of a target of 25 million users by 2020, so far it had managed only 3.6 million.

It's not just the possibility of public-interest age verification that's being squandered. From procurement to income tax, canonical data is the foundation of efficient governance.

A great opportunity to build genuine digital infrastructure is being wasted.

The true culprit here is not the Government Digital Service, but the short-sighted ministers who have systematically undermined what was once one of the UK's proudest exports.

Rowland Manthorpe

Inevitably, this report is being read as an endorsement of the idea that government can't build tech.

In fact, the message should be the exact opposite.

The true culprit here is not the Government Digital Service, but the short-sighted ministers who have systematically undermined what was once one of the UK's proudest exports.

The same ministers that are frittering away trust by using government data for cheap Political wins, such as using NHS data to track migrants.

This should be a new Victorian age of building digital institutions.

Instead, we are passing the buck - and the power - to big tech.

Politicians are looking for tech companies to solve their problems. They should be careful what they wish for.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Beth Rigby - A deal is on the table. Are Brexiteers playing with fire?