CANBERRA, April 22 (Xinhua) -- Australia's eSafety Commissioner has put video game platforms on notice over concerns that young people are being groomed and radicalized while playing online games.
The online safety regulator said on Wednesday that it has issued mandatory transparency notices to major platforms, including Steam, Roblox and the Microsoft-owned Minecraft, requiring them to explain how they identify, prevent and respond to grooming and radicalization as well as bullying and online hate.
Julie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner, said in a statement that 90 percent of Australian children aged 8 to 17 had played online games.
"Predatory adults know this and target children through grooming or embedding terrorist and violent extremist narratives in gameplay, increasing the risks of contact offending, radicalization and other off-platform harms," she said.
"These online game and gaming-adjacent platforms are used by millions of children and so it is imperative that they take every possible step to protect them and continue to improve safeguards," Inman Grant said.
Under Australia's codes and standards for age-restricted material, online services that fail to protect children from exposure to age-inappropriate content, including high-impact violence, can face fines worth up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (35.4 million U.S. dollars).
Additionally, services that fail to comply with a transparency notice from the eSafety Commissioner can be fined up to 825,000 Australian dollars (590,213.3 USD) per day. ■
