Collective Shout welcomed the opportunity to provide a submission and recommendations on the Codes of Practice for the Online Industry (Class 1C and Class 2 Material). You can read the full submission here.
Collective Shout recommended that:
1. Age assurance processes should be implemented for all online services and Tier 1 and Tier 2 equipment that Australian end-users engage with.
2. Operating system providers and device/equipment providers should be required to use age estimation technologies to provide the highest-level protections
for child users.
3. Messaging services should prohibit Class 1C and Class 2 materials and the Codes should require these services to scan/remove these materials.
4. Industry Codes must be technology-neutral to allow for new developments and research to be quickly implemented.
5. Services that prohibit high impact online pornography should still implement age assurance measures to limit the risk of child end-users accessing or being exposed to high impact online pornography.
We make these recommendations in light of the fact that "Industry has shown significant reluctance to take preventative measures in the best interests of children as its profit margins have been prioritised."
In our submission, we highlighted that "the sex industry forces its products into public and private life as much as possible. Pornography online is now unavoidable for young people."
We cited evidence from the eSafety Commissioner that “young people described unintentional encounters with online pornography as frequent, unavoidable and unwelcome.” One in three young people who had seen pornography online encountered content unintentionally before the age of 13. A total of 88% of young people who had seen pornography online had encountered it unintentionally. Young people reported that the “experience of unintentionally coming across porn felt intrusive and disempowering and made them feel uncomfortable.”
We also reinforced the significant harms of exposure to violent pornography - "exposure to violent pornography is the strongest predictor of sexual violence among males and females and has a significant association with attitudes supporting violence against women."
We included data from our Sexual Harassment of Teachers (SHoT) report where "many teachers observed how unfettered access to pornography was contributing to the rise of sexual harassment and harmful sexual behaviours in schools." Findings from SHoT survey responses include:
- Almost 80% reported a rise of harmful sexual behaviours in their schools.
- Survey respondents are seeing more victims of Image Based Sexual Abuse [IBSA]. They report instances of children as young as Year 2 accessing and
sharing pornographic content through personal devices or social media. - Teachers expressed despair about the rapid rise of harmful sexual behaviours which they attributed to early exposure to pornography, the malign
influence of social media influencers, and broader societal sexist attitudes. - Teachers reported boys as young as Year 7 were making comments about rape in class or making rape ‘jokes’ towards girls.
- Teachers reported that girls in Year 7 were told by boys that they will be raped, other boys are making “violent rape threats”, and “older boys [state]
they intend to rape their future partners when they grow up.” - 23 teachers reported personally experiencing rape threats and 118 reported personally experiencing rape jokes.
We finalised our submission by stating: "As the focus of this legislation is on protecting children from harmful content, every platform or service that could expose a child to harm should be age assured. Collective Shout will continue to demand accountability, transparency, safety and risk
mitigation in alignment with duty of care obligations."
See also:
Previous submission to eSafety Industry Standards
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