European lawmakers vote to ban online ads targeting kids

Strasbourg: European lawmakers voted Tuesday to ban online ads targeting children, intensifying Big Tech platforms' crackdown and content moderation policies.

The proposed ban was included in a draft of the EU's content moderation regulation, the Digital Services Act. In addition, the European Parliament's internal market commission was approved with a large majority of votes.

Parliament's text, which is still pending negotiation in the coming months, includes a line that seeks to prevent technology companies such as Facebook, Google, TikTok, and others from allowing companies to target minors through their platforms.

The move is part of a broader push across Europe to impose online age verification systems so that children cannot access some platforms with content deemed harmful to them, including pornography.

"We want to protect minors using platforms," Christel Schaldemose, the Danish Social Democrat lawmaker in charge of the file, told POLITICO.

She said the law still needs to be improved to ensure that the identification of minors does not compromise privacy rights but added that "the platforms today already have actual knowledge about who minors are."

Last year proposed by the European Commission, the Digital Services Law (DSA) aims to create rules at the European level for online platforms. The bill seeks to crack down on illegal content, regulate online advertising, and impose transparency on platform algorithms.

Banning ads aimed at children could become a thorny issue in future negotiations to finalize the law.

The committee's text will be voted on in the plenary session of Parliament, probably in January. The bill is subject to three-way negotiations between the Parliament, the Commission and the EU Council, which represents the governments of the EU. The final rules could take effect from 2023.

In November, EU countries did not restrict targeted advertising in their agreed position, but Schaldemose said she was confident capitals could be persuaded to add it to the final text.

MEPs also voted to ban manipulative designs to push users to consent to online tracking, known as "dark patterns", and gave users the right to choose whether to receive targeted advertising. Lawmakers also added more obligations for online marketplaces like Amazon to randomly check products sold by third-party sellers through their online store and inform users if they have purchased illicit products, in addition to removing them.

The draft rules also said tech companies and regulators should be able to challenge orders from European public authorities to remove specific pieces of illegal content or request information about users. Meanwhile, users would be allowed to seek redress and compensation from technology companies if they face severe damage to their services.

Lawmakers also want tech companies like Facebook and Google's YouTube to open up about the ways they moderate content, a long-standing demand from lawmakers and NGOs that would now be enshrined in law.

Companies would have to inform users when rules and user agreements change and say how many employees work to moderate content for each European language. Large platforms would also have to assess the risks they pose to society and stop the spread of disinformation on their pages.