2018-03-28
Russian Safer Internet Centre
awareness, sidIn 2018, Safe Runet Week covered over 60 regions, with main events held in Moscow where each audience had its own specific event. Such events were held for children and youth, parents, educators, and industry. And, as is tradition, on the day of SID, this year taking place on 6 February 2018, the Safe Runet Forum/CyberSecurityForum 2018 was held, which is the key event of the week.
One of the main topics discussed during this year's Safe Runet Week was cyber-humiliation in its different forms. The key problem with this set of threats is lack of actual protection for victims, particularly in terms of takedown of such content. As many of us know, exercising any rights should not infringe the rights of others, and this is the relevant basis for the protection of victims of cyber-humiliation. Takedown of cyber-humiliating content should be done primarily by content providers, including social networks – for that purpose, they should have reporting channels which are clearly visible, assessment of reports should be made with the interests of the victim as priority, and content should be taken down within 48 hours, as is the case in instances of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). These policies are present in the self-regulation Charter project which was presented during Safe Runet Week and has much in common with European Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Online Hate Speech.
Another problem is quality rehabilitation of online threat victims. While helplines serve as an "ambulance", long-term support and rehabilitation is needed close to the victim and so the project of a network of "trusted centres" was discussed. One of the issues of this project is the need to understand the quality of psychologists which will deal with victims all over Russia, and possible training of rehabilitation staff.
Many speakers at the Forum looked towards the near future, discussing safety issues in "connected homes" and with robots. Besides protection from financial threats (research shows that children and youth are very vulnerable to them) and breach of privacy, the issue with "smart sex dolls" was raised with the perspective of possible CSAM with robots in form-factor of children. While no actual child is being abused, this content may serve as promotion and incitement for child sexual abuse, and it might be used by sexual predators in the grooming process.
Another notable part of the Week was discussion of the Positive Content Criteria, developed for the "Decade of Childhood" Presidential Strategy and first presented in December 2017. While these criteria are universal, they have many special provisions for online content and include requirements for text, design, appearance and content in general. These criteria were already taken into use for regional contests of safe and positive content for children and youth.
See the Russian Safer Internet Day profile page for further information.
Find out more about the work of the Russian Safer Internet Centre (SIC), including its awareness raising, helpline, hotline and youth participation services.
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Safer Internet Day Team
online reputation