The Children’s Media Foundation (CMF)

CGMS – Forum Day 2

December 23, 2017 , 0

Greg Childs, Director of CMF, reports on the Forum (the open discussion event for all delegates) which closed proceedings Day 2 of the Children's Global Media  Summit 2017, in Manchester.
This second Forum was an interesting group Interesting group of delegates who had clearly;y spent time in various sessions.  Alice Webb, Director of BBC Children's and the North, presided and introduced some speakers to reflect on themes of the the day.  What emerged quite quickly was a sense that the Summit's major through line was becoming the responsibilities of platform owners (such as Google/YouTube) when children are inevitably in their user-base.
Speakers were divided on where responsibility should lie for "fixing the internet" to make it safer for kids.  A representative from the CMF threw in a comment from the floor that it was the platform's responsibility to become chidl-freindly by defaultGreg threw in the responsibilities of the platforms for kids as users. One of the panelists, Jan Pinkava from Google Spotlight Stories responded that it’s clear people at the conference are really concerned about what's happening on social media platforms, but he suggested we put ourselves in the platforms’ shoes. They have to serve their shareholders. How do they change things so they can still work?
Russell Miller replied from the floor - "It’s our job as citizens to stop them". It's not impossible to regulate the internet. Wee regulated advertising of tobacco to stop child addiction, we brought in child labour laws to defeat exploitation. Some things are not right and the market alone cannot be relied upon to fix them.

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