UK AADC Standard 6 - Policies and community standards
Enforce all published terms, policies, and community standards consistently
Where this comes from
Provision: Standard 6 - Policies and community standards
Instrument: UK Age Appropriate Design Code
Citation: Information Commissioner's Office, Age Appropriate Design: a code of practice for online services, Standard 6
Text version: ICO Age Appropriate Design Code (statutory code under Data Protection Act 2018 s 123), issued 2 Sept 2020
Who it applies to
It applies when all of these are true:
- Service is likely to be accessed by children under 18
- Service allows user-generated content
…unless:
- Graduated enforcement permitted where immediate removal would cause greater harm to the child. (ICO AADC Standard 6)
Scope in the source's own terms
- Service has published terms that apply to children
- Service operates under GDPR (EU scope; block moved from UK-GDPR authorship)
What engineering work it implies
Sample acceptance criteria Landfall generates for this obligation:
- Content can be flagged (by users and/or automated classifiers) and enters a moderation queue
- Moderation decisions (allow / remove / restrict / escalate) are recorded with reviewer, reason, and timestamp
- Priority/expedited handling exists for illegal content and child-safety categories
- Affected users are notified of moderation actions with a stated reason and appeal path
- Repeat-offender and re-upload prevention is in place where required
Evidence an auditor expects
- Policy documentDocument review
Terms of service and community guidelines
Published terms with child-relevant provisions clearly stated
- Process recordLog analysis
Enforcement action logs
Records of terms enforcement actions demonstrating consistent application
Questions people ask
- Does UK AADC Standard 6 - Policies and community standards apply to my service?
- It applies when Service is likely to be accessed by children under 18; Service allows user-generated content. It does not apply where Graduated enforcement permitted where immediate removal would cause greater harm to the child. (ICO AADC Standard 6).
- From when does this apply?
- UK AADC Standard 6 - Policies and community standards applies from 2 September 2021. Its current status is: in force.
- What evidence does an auditor expect?
- Terms of service and community guidelines; Enforcement action logs.
Find out whether this one lands on you
Landfall's pre-scan answers the applicability question above for your product in minutes, then turns every obligation that applies into traceable engineering tickets with a citation chain your auditors can follow.
Not legal advice. Landfall maps regulatory obligations to engineering work for planning purposes. Its verdicts are not legal advice and create no attorney-client relationship — verify with qualified counsel before relying on them.