French President Emmanuel Macron has launched the Children Online Protection Laboratory aimed at safeguarding children from online threats and cyberbullying through the monitoring of harmful content.
This initiative coincides with Macron’s re-election campaign and emphasizes the need for stricter age verification on adult websites and social media platforms to protect minors from predators, cyberbullying, and other dangers to their mental and social well-being.
“The digital space cannot be a place of lawlessness. It is the fight that we have led against terrorism, that we are leading against online hate speech. This is what we must pursue in terms of the protection of our children,” Macron stated during a roundtable in Paris.
Throughout his presidency, Macron has advocated for child safety reforms, having previously called for action on this issue with UNICEF last year and emphasized the importance of online age authentication in France.
Macron has also announced that several companies, including Estonia, New Zealand, Amazon, Dailymotion, Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, Snap, TikTok, and Qwant, have joined France in supporting this initiative.
Additionally, Macron reached out to Twitter CEO Elon Musk with a tweet asking, “Will the bird protect our children?”
The charter is inspired by the Christchurch Call, a framework created by Macron and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to limit the dissemination of terrorist content online.
European governments are taking steps to enhance online safety, with the UK reinforcing its Online Safety Bill to ensure a safer online environment while advocating for freedom of expression.