Call for Participation in Online Safety Community Group

The Online Safety Community Group has been launched:

The mission of this group is to provide a discussion forum about the technical and architectural considerations for online safety, including safety for children online. While many see a particular interest in bolstering safety for vulnerable populations such as children, safety is important to all users of the Web.

The scope includes discussions of architectures for age-based restrictions to content online, as a potential tool for children’s online safety. This is a complicated techno-policy issue, and proposed regulations often suffer from lack of understanding about available technologies, including their capabilities, limitations, and implications. Choices made in support of age-gating systems may have significant effects on global networks and their end users, impacting human rights as well as core architectural principles. This topic and the potential for a community group was discussed at (among other places), W3C TPAC 2025, W3C Breakouts Day 2026 and the Privacy Working Group, and follows conversation at the IAB/W3C Workshop on Age-Based Restrictions on Content Access in 2026, and with the W3C Technical Architecture Group. The amount of attention indicates that technologists and other interested parties are seeking a forum where these issues can be examined in depth, among a diverse group of experts.

This CG expects to support the following goals (among others):

• developing a shared understanding of age-based content restriction considerations;
• deepening insights into technical mechanisms (e.g., zero-knowledge proofs, device-enforcement): their capabilities, limitations, and deployment considerations;
• modeling threats to online safety, including harassment, unwanted contact, distressing content, disclosure of personal information (including “doxxing”) and other forms of abuse, especially to vulnerable or marginalized people;
• analyzing how technological choices influence privacy, freedom of expression, Internet fragmentation, and centralization;
• sharing relevant resources, such as research papers and policy documents;
• identifying and incubating technical standards work (if any) for addressing these issues.

This group may publish specifications and other types of reports, either as incubation for future standardization or as information or feedback for stakeholders, including policymakers, interested in online safety.

Previously published W3C Statements may provide useful guidance and context for further work including the Privacy Principles (on vulnerability, guardians, device administrators, protection from abusive behavior) and Ethical Web Principles (on harm to society, healthy community, universal access, privacy and free expression).

In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.

This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2026-04-30 by Tara Whalen. The following people supported its creation: Coralie Mercier, Nick Doty, Tara Whalen, Lola Odelola, Joey Stanford and Florian Scholz. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.

The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.

We invite you to share news of this new group on social media and other channels.

If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team