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Protecting Children on-Wiki: a Child Rights Solutions Workshop

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Ricky Gaines, WMF Human Rights Policy & Advocacy Lead

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Objectives

  1. Understand risks to children on-Wiki (15 min)
  2. Review and prioritize recommendations (15 min)
  3. Develop concrete plans of action (30 min)
  4. Share action plans and feedback (20 min)

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Understanding Risks to Children on-Wiki

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Why did we commission a Child Rights Impact Assessment?

  • Commitment to human rights
  • Recommended by 2020 human rights impact assessment
  • Growing interest among governments to legislate and regulate for child safety online

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Child_Rights_Impact_Assessment

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What did it evaluate?

  • Opportunities for children (<18 years of age)
  • Risks facing children on Wikimedia projects
  • Output: assessment of how the movement manages child-related risks and actionable recommendations

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Where is Child Safety Being Discussed?

Brazil: PL2628

UK: Online Safety Act

Australia: Basic Online Safety Expectations

EU: DSA Task Force on Age Verification & Guidelines to enforce the protection of minors online

France: Loi SREN

Spain: Age-verification using e-ID

Germany: Age verification

pilot project

USA: Kids Online Safety Act & Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act

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Analysis

Per

Editors

  • Volunteer editors 
  • Volunteer administrators

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Per

In-Person Participants

  • Members of clubs or events at school
  • Attendees of Wikimedia events, including Wikimania 
  • Attendees of informal meetups

Per

General Public

  • Readers of Wikimedia content 
  • Subjects of Wikimedia content (e.g. Wikipedia article describing a child celebrity)

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Benefits & Opportunities

Lifelong benefits to economic opportunities and self esteem

Rights to education and development

Rights to civic, cultural, social, and political participation

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Freedom of expression

Right to access information

Freedom of association

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Risks

CC by SA 4.0, Tomere

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CC by SA 4.0, KaterinCarrillo

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  • Harassment and bullying
  • Exposure to harmful content and misrepresentation of facts
  • Infringement on the right to privacy
  • Harmful contact and child exploitation (including CSAM)
  • Discrimination and non-equity
  • Inaccessibility and inequity
  • Lack of voice in the movement
  • Inadequate access to remedy

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What have we accomplished so far?

  • Published the Combating Online Child Exploitation Policy
  • Provided easy-to-understand recommendations in the child protection policy for children to protect themselves
  • Continuing the development of the Incident Reporting System
  • Including child rights considerations in recent reviews of grant applications
  • Identified and documented activities and initiatives occurring within Wikimedia communities that work to empower and protect children
  • Improved the structure and governance of the Foundation’s Human Rights Steering Committee
  • Designated a current staff member to lead child safeguarding efforts within the Foundation’s Trust and Safety team

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Review & Prioritize Recommendations

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1

Evaluate the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy through a child rights lens

2

Establish working group of volunteers to consider how recommendations of the 2023 Movement Strategy incorporate children’s rights & identify gaps

3

Leverage the WikiLearn platform to deliver child safeguarding training to volunteers

4

Develop a rapid escalation process for cases or incidents involving children within the Incident Reporting System

5

Build in safety mechanisms and training opportunities into the existing Children’s Wikipedias (e.g., Vikida, Txikipedia), particularly for ages 8-13

6

Develop a “Children’s Guide to Editing” to educate young users on Wikipedia tools, resources, and safety tips

7

Engage with children through school programs and initiatives focused on advancing children’s rights online

8

Affiliates establish relationship with local organizations working on child protection, so they can help with advice and referrals

9

Provide training to any volunteers who have contact with children

Recommendations

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Exercise 1

  • Goal: Prioritize recommendations as a group (10 min)
  • Prompt: Which are most feasible for our movement, and which would be most impactful to keep children safe on-Wiki?
  • Task:
    • Navigate to poll using this QR code or at Menti.com and using code 2618 8194
    • Rate the feasibility and potential impact of each recommendation on a scale of 1 (least) to 10 (most)

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Exercise 2

  • Goal: Develop an action plan for how affiliates and individual

volunteers can lead on a specific action

  • Task: Divide into small groups for 30 minutes and answer the following questions:
    • What is the desired outcome?
    • Who in the movement is ideally suited to lead on this?
    • How does the movement get to that outcome? What steps are required?
    • What would be a realistic timeline?
    • What resources are needed?
    • How can we in this room make this happen?

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Let’s Share!

  • Tell us about your group’s action plan
  • What feedback do other groups have?
  • How can other groups support your plans?
  • What other ideas do you have to keep children safe on-Wiki?
  • What is one thing you can do after this exercise to make Wikimedia projects safer for children?

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Protecting children on-Wiki is all of our responsibility.

We encourage you to take on any effort you think could keep children safer, try something out, and share with others.

Anyone can be a leader in this effort!

Stay in touch! Email globaladvocacy@wikimedia.org to join our mailing list.

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Thank you!