ABSTRACT
This chapter begins to look at how algorithms are used around safeguarding for children and the underpinning legislation and policy for this. It explores the technical interventions and shows both the pragmatic and effective, and then the less successful. The chapter explores why some approaches work, and some do not, and also whether solutions, in actual fact, do much to safeguarding children and young people. As schools and colleges increasingly work online, it is essential that children are safeguarded from potentially harmful and inappropriate online material. The term inappropriate is frequently used in the child safeguarding space to describe types of content deemed unsuitable for children to view. Yet family-friendly WiFi remains something that is viewed as a step forward in algorithmic child safeguarding, even if the problem it is tackling has little evidence of existing.
