London – In a report, titled "Harmful content on the Internet and in video games," which examines "the Internet’s dark side," the UK government’s House of Commons' Culture Media and Sport Committee calls on social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube to implement stricter policies, impose more content filtering, and better facilitate processes to report abuse, as reported by Ars Technica.

In a strongly worded assessment, the Committee describes the Internet as a place "where hardcore pornography and videos of fights, bullying or alleged rape can be found, as can websites promoting extreme diets, self-harm, and even suicide."

The Committee provides a list of twenty-nine conclusions and recommendations focused on measures social media sites can take to improve filtering of content and speed up take-down procedures where content with child abuse or pornography is involved. Among the recommendations, the Committee called on YouTube and other to implement age classifications for content and to develop controls to prevent children from accessing adult content.

Other recommendations include requiring sites to makes their terms of service more obvious to users, making privacy protections the default, requiring users to make profiles public, and putting controls in place that make it easier for users to report child pornography to law enforcement officials.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080731-uk-group-calls-on-youtube-...