The President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, announced that the country will prohibit the use of social media for those under 16 and that platforms will be required to implement age verification systems.

Sánchez announced Spain’s decision during his participation in the World Government Summit in Dubai. The president added that his country “has focused on digital governance as a central issue of our era that must be addressed globally in the face of the failed state into which the social media ecosystem has devolved, where laws are ignored and crimes are tolerated.”

He also referred to the “lack of governance in content control and impunity for those who violate the law, the spread of disinformation and hate speech, and the lack of protection of personal data and material as serious dangers that challenge the protection of rights and freedoms and distort reality, particularly for minors who have integrated the use of social media into their daily lives.”

The priority is the protection of minors, in addition to greater control over social media. This will be reinforced by the Executive’s push to include in the penal code the manipulation of algorithms and the amplification of illegal content. This will be a joint effort with the Public Prosecutor’s Office “to prosecute potential legal infractions by Google, TikTok, and Instagram and will defend Spain’s digital sovereignty” against any type of foreign coercion.

M.Pino

Source: euronews

(Reference image source: Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash)

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La entrada Spain announces social media ban for under 16s apareció primero en Bitfinance.