Pope Francis has appealed to tech giants to prevent or block children from having easy access to online porn.
Speaking at the Promoting Digital Child Dignity conference in the Vatican, Pope Francis called for actions to be taken to block children from having easy access and exposure to porn, sex sites and other harmful contents online.
He said: “There is a need to ensure that investors and managers remain accountable, so that the good of minors and society is not sacrificed to profit.
“For the sake of advancing the development of the internet and its many benefits, companies that provide services have long considered themselves mere suppliers of technological platforms, neither legally nor morally responsible for the way they are used.”
He continued: “It is now clear that they cannot consider themselves completely unaccountable vis-a-vis the services they provide for their customers. So I make an urgent appeal to them to assume their responsibility towards minors, their integrity and their future.”
The Pope said the balancing of free expression and privacy online is a “crucial aspect” of digital life and raised fears about increased use of encryption which would make “any control extremely difficult, if not impossible”.
Francis admitted the “painful and tragic experience” of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church gave it a sense of “duty to approach these issues with a long-term vision”.
