China’s State Council has released a new volley in the country’s ongoing efforts to make the internet safe and healthy for minors. The new draft authority consolidates and expands on several existing areas of authority as discussed below.
I. Identification of Minor Users
Before any special rules for minors can be implemented, one must determine which users are underage.
While other countries still debate the balance of interests in age verification measures that require all users to upload ID documents, sacrificing some user anonymity in the name of child protection, China already operates a real-name verification system for users of most online services. Unsurprisingly, this alone has not been entirely effective at identifying minor users- who continuously find new workarounds such as using adult logins, guest modes, and fake IDs, with the authorities often a step or two behind.
Article 6 of the draft provisions offers five illustrative means of identifying minors:
- Checking government ID.
- Using the national online identification authentication service – a system through which the government verifies user credentials and provides tokens recognized by online platforms, etc., allowing users to verify their ages without sharing personal information directly with the platform.
- Using the Distributed Digital Identity Authentication Service – A similar government program that has recently been proposed, with an even broader scope.
- Unsaved, single-use facial verification – The draft is clear that this verification would not store facial information, but would use facial recognition for a one-off comparison with registered documents, or age detection.
- Behavior Trait Recognition: Potentially the most troubling option, because it implies that every users’ behavior could be constantly being monitored to detect ‘minor-like’ usage patterns. Likely added here to detect minors who are using adults’ login credentials. This issue has emerged before, such as in the 2021 Opinions of the General Office of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Strengthening the Protection of Minors in the Online Cultural Market [at 4] or more recently in the requirement for some AI services to monitor users for emotional crises as well as their age (at 13). While cynics may suggest that both corporate and government actors are constantly analyzing online behavior, and for less benign purposes, it is sobering to see it written so clearly that users are always being watched
II. Service Prohibitions and Restrictions for Minors:
Articles 4 and 5 are at the heart of the new provisions, providing for two types of coduct – online services that are never permissible for minors, and services available to minors, but only through minors modes.
Article 9, builds on these to say that when users who are identified as minors are using the services listed in article 5, they must be automatically switched to Minors Mode- limiting their access to adult content.
While most of these items build on existing rules, as noted, there is some truly original content.
Article 4(1) is the first full prohibition on minors using social networking with strangers (陌生人网络社交服务). That term is undefined, however, and it is unclear whether it refers to entire services or specific functions within them. Contrasting it with the types of service allowed in minors mode, listed in Article 5(2) is only more confusing.
It may be that the intent is to both shield minors from seeing content generated by accounts they haven’t friended or followed, and also prevent unknown accounts from viewing minors’ materials. Previous legal authority, including the 2023 Regulations on the Protection of Minors Online, required that platforms must provide functions for blocking strangers from seeing minors’ posts or sending them private messages. [at 26] This type of blocking was later established as the default setting in Minors Modes.
Article 5(3) goes beyond existing authority by requiring minors modes for AI that may impact minors’ cognition. (可能影响未成年人认知). A similar requirement of identifying minors and shifting them to minors mode appeared in Article 14, paragraph 3, of the Human-like AI Measures, but applied only to that subcategory of AI maintaining sustained relationships. This vague term will likely be clarified in future drafts.
The Article 9 requirement of automatically switching users to minors modes also closely aligns with Article 12 of the Human-like AI Measures, but now applies to all of the services in section 5 as well as just human-like AI. This effectively makes minors modes mandatory.
III. Minors Modes
The 2020 Revisions to the Law on the Protection of Minors codified the idea of minors modes (article 74), an idea that had been percolating in lower-level authority for years. The minors modes needed to be made available but key service types, but there weren’t firm requirements for their use.
The 2024 Guidelines on Minors Modes emphasized:
- Parental Control – facilitating guardians’ control over children’s internet use by associating a parental account to receive information on the child’s usage, and limit the child’s screen time, duration, spending, and content.
- Age Classification- considering the age and cognitive ability of a minor in establishing default settings.
- Linking three levels of service providers- creating mutual recognition between the minors modes of Devices, APP stores, and APPs, so that parents need only activate the mode once for it to function at all levels.
The new draft adds a few new rules:
- Article 5/9 requirement that identified minors be automatically switched to minors mode. This somewhat weakens parental discretion and brings minors modes a step closer to mandatory. Additionally, because false positives- wrongly identifying an adult as a minor- are inevitable, it is essential that the required remedial measures be fast and effective.
2. Recording of Minors Modes. For the first time, the draft requires that information on the minors modes of devices, app stores, and services be filed with provincial-level internet authorities (Article 12). Those with especially large numbers of minor users, or a major impact on minors as a whole, should file with the national-level authorities and have an obligation to report on implementation. Existing authority describes what services meet this description.
3. Minors Modes requirement for devices being granted internet access (12). The departments for telecommunications are to review minors modes in phones, tablets, and other smart devices when conducting testing for the granting of internet access permits.
4. Requirement of notifying guardians of emotional crises. Service providers are now required to intervene and notify guardians or other emergency contacts when minors in minors modes have circumstances like self-harm or suicide. It is unclear how these situations will be detected, and what standard will be used in assessing them.
Again, the human-like AI rules previously required this for that limited range of services (Article 13), but it is being expanded here to all services in minors’ modes, which impact even late teens.
IV. Content Controls
One of the key functions of minors modes is to limit what content is accessible to minors. There is not much new in this regard, but understanding these terms of art and context will help in reading the draft.
Current Chinese rules on content for minors involve 2 categories: (1) Content harmful to minors, and (2) content that “might impact minors’ physical or psychological health.” (PHM). The first category is largely defined as content that is illegal under China’s existing regulatory scheme for all internet users, as well as anything promoting self-harm.
The second category, PHM, isn’t illegal, but cannot be targeted at minors, must be labeled, and shouldn’t be promoted online through prominent placement, etc. Unfortunately, the category remains troublingly broad and hard to pin down, as we have noted before.
V. Specific Duties
Finally, beyond the main duties assigned to device manufacturers, app stores, and service providers, the draft lays out specific roles for families, schools, and relevant authorities.:
- Jeremy Daum
- Jeremy Daum
- Jeremy Daum
- Jeremy Daum
English
中文(简体)
Be First to Comment