The UK government is done asking nicely: it's writing a law to make Apple and Google block nude images on children's devices.
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy told the House of Commons on September 8 that voluntary talks with Apple and Google had not gone far enough. The legislation would require the two companies to stop children from taking, sharing, or viewing nude images on phones and tablets. Nandy's Commons statement did not spell out the technical mechanism the companies would have to build, and no bill text or timeline has been published yet.
This is a shift from persuasion to compulsion, and it puts device makers, not just app stores, on the hook for content moderation at the operating-system level. If it becomes law, Apple and Google would need to build detection or restriction tools into iOS and Android themselves, rather than leaving the job to individual apps or parental-control add-ons.
Voluntary tech-industry pacts have a habit of underdelivering; this is what happens when Westminster decides talking has run its course.