Mandating Online Platforms in Singapore to Incorporate Safety-by-design Principles to Prevent Child Sexual Exploitation

Ms Elysa Chen asked the Minister for Digital Development and Information (a) whether online platforms operating in Singapore will be required to incorporate safety-by-design principles to prevent child sexual exploitation; (b) if not, why not; and (c) when will the Ministry mandate such safeguards, given that international standards are already in place elsewhere.

Mr Speaker, under the Infocomm Media Development Authority's (IMDA's) Codes of Practice for Online Safety, designated social media services and app stores are required to proactively detect and swiftly remove child sexual exploitation and abuse activity on their platforms, such as online grooming for child sexual abuse.

Additionally, these services are required to put in place systems and processes to mitigate Singapore users' exposure to harmful content, including child sexual exploitation material. These are aligned with safety-by-design principles that require platforms to build proactive safeguards and prevent harm, rather than react to the harm that occurs.

IMDA also regularly assesses the designated platforms' compliance with their respective Codes of Practice for Online Safety. In the latest Online Safety Assessment Report for designated social media services published on 31 March 2026, IMDA found serious weaknesses in X's measures to proactively detect and remove child sexual exploitation and abuse material on its platform. IMDA issued a Letter of Caution to X and placed it under Enhanced Supervision to hold it accountable to rectify its serious weaknesses.

Ms Chen.

I thank the Minister of State. The Codes of Practice currently impose child sexual exploitation duties only on designated social media and app distribution services. I wanted to ask whether messaging services and gaming platforms, such as Roblox and Minecraft, where grooming and unsolicited contact risks arise, will be brought within scope and what criteria govern designation?

I also wanted to ask a second supplementary question. Artificial intelligence (AI) companion applications and conversational agents now sustain prolonged, private interactions with minors. Yet they fall outside both Codes of Practice. May I ask whether such services will be designated and whether they will carry the same detection and reporting obligations as social media services?

Last, the Online Safety Commission (OSC) has been operational since June 2026. I would like to ask whether it will be given an explicit mandate to enforce safety by design standards against child sexual exploitation and what might the timeline be for such an implementation?

Mr Speaker, we appreciate the Member's concerns on this issue. In relation to questions one and two, these are things that we are also concerned with. We are regularly reviewing the scope of our current online safety measures to ensure that the support and the protection for children is extensive. It is part of our efforts to enhance online safety in Singapore.

This also includes whether to extend our regulatory ambit to include other types of online services, such as what the Member mentioned – the AI chat bots, messaging, gaming services and we are reviewing this. We will announce more details when we are ready.

With regard to the question on the OSC, I would like to just make a clarification here. The OSC serves a different function. For this purpose, it is IMDA, which works with the designated social media services under the Code of Practice for Online Safety – Social Media Services, what we call the Social Media Services (SMS) Code. The SMS code imposes requirements on the designated social media services to put in place online safety measures, including safeguards to address child sexual exploitation.

So, just to expand the clarification on the OSC, it is an avenue for victims to seek relief for specified online harms. The Commissioner of Online Safety is empowered to issue directions to platforms, but these are in response to individual cases, because it has to be triggered by the victims. It is not a proactive regulator of platform design. But they have engaged with major online service providers and will continue to work closely with them to ensure that online harms, including image-based child abuse, are addressed in a timely manner.