Protection through empowerment and not exclusion: EDRi’s response to DSA Article 28 call for evidence

EDRi’s submission

EDRi, together with our members Bits of Freedom, Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, IT-Political Association of Denmark, Panoptykon Foundation and Wikimedia EU, submitted a response to the European Commission’s call for evidence for the DSA Article 28 guidelines for the protection of minors online.

Our main recommendations

We foreground the importance of adopting a holistic approach in our submission to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and digital security of minors. Being mindful of the role online spaces play in the overall development of children and young people, we stress that their protection should be on the basis of empowerment and not exclusion.

We similarly highlight the dangers of solely relying on technosolutionist approaches to societal problems since, in reality, approaches can vary greatly depending on the nature of each platform and the context of user experiences. The over-use of technical approaches and risk mitigation measures such as age verification systems are likely to have adverse impacts on the fundamental rights of all users, and not just minors.

Safeguarding children’s digital rights in the online environment requires substantive changes to the way tech firms design their products and services, as well as teaching children how to use them. Any protection designed to ensure the highest level of privacy, safety and security for minors is also an opportunity to apply the same principles to all users, and to ensure that everyone can have control and ownership over their own digital lives.

Our submission is primarily informed by EDRi’s 2023 research on age verification technology and children’s rights, conducted in collaboration with 19 other organisations including children’s digital rights group Defend Digital Me. It is also backed by evidence and recommendations from our members who have been advocating for human-centric recommender systems, privacy and safety by design and default, user empowerment, child participation in the design process, among others.

Other recommendations include:

• pushing for nuanced, transparent and context-based risk assessments instead of a blanket typology of risks such as the OECD’s 5C risks mentioned in the call for evidence
• calling on platforms and service providers to proactively change their design, features and functioning instead of adopting reactive mitigation measures based on their risk assessments
• prioritising privacy and safety by design and default, including addressing toxic features such as addictive design, dark patterns and misleading design
• including children and young people in the product development and design processes, particularly in designing child-friendly interfaces and redress mechanisms that take into account their agency and their ability to make choices that serve their best interests

In line with the DSA’s aim to make platforms transparent and accountable, we urge continued conversations with civil society organisations, digital rights groups, children’s rights groups and experts in drafting the guidelines and conducting risk assessments.

The guidelines for the protection of minors is an opportunity to harness the potential of the DSA in prioritising systemically addressing risks, while also confronting the much-needed societal and structural changes to keep young people safe in offline and online environments.