Kids can now report unwanted photos to Apple. Is it a good idea?

Apple is trying a new approach to protecting children, with a stepped up feature starting in Australia and eventually available around the world. A...

Apple is trying a new approach to protecting children, with a stepped-up feature starting in Australia and eventually available around the world.

Apple will now let kids notify the company about inappropriate images they receive in the built-in iPhone messaging app. And to identify potential abusers, Apple will peer at those chat messages - a new step from a company that stresses the privacy of messages.

Technology companies with many millions of young users have a long history of introducing children’s safety and parental oversight features that shift responsibility from the companies to parents, and that often prove ineffective or little used.

Now the question is whether Apple, which has been criticized for looking the other way at child abuses through its technologies, can satisfy kids and parents who feel overwhelmed and alarmed by the online risks to young people.

What Apple’s new child protection feature will do