The Archewell Foundation believes the technology in our families’ lives should be safe by design. Safety by design is an approach to child online safety that prioritizes accountability, user empowerment, and transparency.  

Around the world, young people, parents, and advocates are building a better online world by doing the hard work of pushing for tech accountability and innovation developed with safety in mind.  

The Archewell Foundation is committed to uplifting their wins. 
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This week, our partners at Heat Initiative announced their recent success in calling for meaningful safety improvements to Meta’s platforms. Following mounting pressure from parents, young people, and advocacy organizations like the Heat Initiative, Meta has announced a series of changes to better protect young people online using Instagram and Facebook. This win is a clear example of why raising awareness and demanding change is so important in the fight to keep our children safe online. 
 
Heat’s campaign – which focused on both design changes to make Meta’s spaces safe for children and predatory accounts targeting children on the platforms – is the latest push to highlight Meta’s failure to provide safe online spaces. Now, Meta has removed 600,000 accounts linked to predatory behavior, as well as 135,000 accounts dangerous to children. They also claim to have addressed designed features: applying stricter filters to messages and comments for adult-run accounts that feature children and updating blocking and reporting features to streamline reporting. Since changes to reporting, more than 2 million accounts exhibiting predatory behavior have been blocked or reported.   

These changes come after other announcements from Meta addressing child online safety have proved to be ineffective. We look forward to ensuring these latest announced improvements are in fact applied across Meta platforms and have the intended impact. Such an assessment requires independent evaluation and data transparency on the part of Meta, and we are hopeful these changes are a sign they will be happy to provide what is necessary.  

Hopefully advertisers and shareholders agree, if not insist, that Meta should proactively ensure no one aiming to harm children should be able to have even one – let alone hundreds of thousands – Meta accounts helping them do their bidding. The burden should not fall on advocacy organizations to stop predatory accounts from running up views and engagement over years before they are finally taken down.

The Archewell Foundation applauds the vital work Heat Initiative and all advocates in the tech accountability space do to ensure Meta, and all online spaces, are safe for children. Their work is helping us build a better online world for everyone.