New Code of Practice for Online Safety for App Distribution Services effective 31 March 2025

25 March 2025

The new Code of Practice for Online Safety for App Distribution Services (“Code”) will take effect on 31 March 2025. Issued by the Info-communications Media Development Authority of Singapore (“IMDA”) pursuant to section 45L of the Broadcasting Act 1994 (“Act”), the Code requires designated App Distribution Services (“ADSs”) with significant reach or impact to put in place system-level measures to curtail the risk of exposure to harmful content for users, especially children who are particularly vulnerable when exposed to inappropriate content online.

The categories of harmful content under the Code include:

  • Sexual content
  • Violent content
  • Suicide and self-harm content
  • Cyberbullying content
  • Content endangering public health
  • Content facilitating vice and organised crime

Designated ADSs will be required to set up age assurance measures to determine whether the users on their platforms are children and ensure better protection for them. Age assurance refers to systems or processes to establish a person’s age or age range, including age estimation and age verification. IMDA will engage designated ADSs on the implementation of age assurance measures. The designated ADSs will have to submit an implementation plan to IMDA.

The implementation plan will be required to include:

  • Details on how designated ADSs intend to implement age assurance to determine whether a user is a child with reasonable accuracy, while ensuring the measure(s) proposed comply with existing data protection provisions. For a start, designated ADSs are expected to prevent children from accessing its highest age rated apps, e.g. 18+; and
  • Timeline for implementing age assurance.

Singapore is an early mover in mandating age assurance measures for ADSs, including restricting children from accessing and downloading age-inappropriate apps based on age ratings set by the designated ADSs.

Background

ADSs were added to the Fourth Schedule to the Act in September 2024. This allows IMDA to direct ADSs to disable access by Singapore users to egregious content on their services. Before the launch of the Code, IMDA conducted a public consultation in October 2024, where ADSs were welcome to provide their feedback.

When the Act was amended in February 2023 to enhance online safety for users in Singapore, a new Part 10A was introduced in the Act to regulate providers of online communication services (“OCSs”) to Singapore end-users. OCSs are electronic services that allow end-users to access or communicate content via the Internet. Part 10A will only apply to specified types of OCSs which are listed in the Fourth Schedule to the Act. Social media services were the first type of OCS specified under the Act, allowing IMDA to issue directions to social media services to disable access by Singapore users to egregious content found on their services. To ensure that social media platforms put in place system-level measures to enhance online safety, IMDA issued a Code of Practice for Online Safety in July 2023, requiring designated social media services to minimise users’ access to harmful content, provide users with effective and easy-to-use reporting, and be accountable to their users by providing transparency on their measures and levels of safety in their online safety reports which have to be submitted to IMDA annually for compliance assessment.

Reference materials

The following materials are available on the IMDA website www.imda.gov.sg: