Following our earlier piece, MediaNama examined child-safety laws in other BRICS countries. Brazil’s researchers ran a baseline study of age assurance just before the country’s new children’s law took effect. Of the 25 digital services examined, 21 had no age verification at the point of registration. The study ran between 10 and 30 January 2026, before the ECA Digital came into force. That is according to Fábio Senne, General Coordinator of Research at Cetic.br and NIC.br, in written responses to MediaNama. It “was therefore intended to serve as a baseline”. No further study has been done since.
Why it matters: India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit on 12 and 13 September. Children’s digital safety sits within a grouping that has agreed, on paper, to exchange knowledge and best practices. Brazil is the member that has legislated furthest. It is also the only one that measured its own starting position before its rules took effect. India has legislated Section 9 of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which commences on 13 May 2027. It has produced no comparable measurement of what age assurance currently looks like here. There is nothing against which to compare a later number.
What Brazil found, and what it did not test
Senne set out the methods the study identified as being in use. For verification, these included official identification documents, those documents combined with a selfie, credit cards, parental consent, Google accounts and social recognition. For estimation, they included photo selfies, video selfies, email addresses, profiling and inference, AI models, capacity tests and facial recognition.
The important qualification is Senne’s own. The study “documented the measures that platforms state they use in their policies, but did not assess the effectiveness of those measures”. It recorded what companies say, not what works.
That distinction matters for anyone in India reading Brazil as a template. A list of methods in circulation is not evidence that any of them functions. Nobody, on this record, has established that.
The study also found policy information scattered across an average of 22 pages per service. MediaNama had asked whether that alone undermines the law’s parental supervision provisions.
Senne declined the framing, because the study “was not designed to assess whether platforms comply with the legislation”. But the findings indicate that access to information “may be hindered by information being scattered across numerous pages, the lack of Portuguese-language versions, and the use of language that may be difficult to understand”.
His conclusion is a design point. Information about age-related protections must be communicated clearly and accessibly, “enabling parents and guardians to exercise more informed and effective supervision”. A supervision duty that a parent cannot locate is not a supervision duty.
What Brazil would tell an Indian policymaker
MediaNama asked Senne what he would say to an Indian policymaker weighing age-gating against a ban. His answer sidestepped the question India keeps asking, and answered a better one.
Cetic.br does not “yet have specific studies that would allow us to assess the concrete impacts of the Digital ECA”. What he urged instead was building the measurement apparatus itself. He pointed to instruments such as the ICT Kids Online Brazil survey and this age assurance study. Strengthening those mechanisms is, in his account, “essential for monitoring the implementation of new measures, identifying their effects over time, and providing evidence to support the continuous improvement of public policies”.
That is a recommendation India can act on now. It does not require deciding between a gate and a ban. It requires knowing what is currently there.
An update to the Brazilian study is planned but has no date. Cetic.br and NIC.br have a cooperation agreement with the ANPD, Brazil’s data protection authority. Under it they support the regulator’s own data gathering.
The Alliance India has not joined
MediaNama also put questions to WeProtect Global Alliance. It is a 104-government body focused on technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse. CSAM was the one area our earlier piece identified as common ground across BRICS.
WeProtect Global Alliance confirmed the membership position on the record. Among BRICS members, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia are members. India, Russia, Egypt and Iran are not.
India chairs the grouping this year. That is a notable absence on the one file where the grouping already agrees.
The Alliance is not closed to India. It has “explored membership with the Indian Government in the past and remain open to them becoming members”, they said. It has strong membership from Indian civil society organisations. The South Asia Initiative to End Violence Against Children is also a member.
On whether it engages with BRICS as a grouping, the answer was no. The Alliance “does not work with the BRICS intergovernmental grouping” but works individually with many BRICS governments. Brazil and the UAE both sit on its Government Taskforce on online child sexual abuse. It works with SAIEVAC, the G7 and the OECD.
So, a body that convenes 104 governments on CSAM has two BRICS members on its taskforce. It has no relationship with BRICS itself and none with this year’s chair.
What the Alliance thinks is achievable
Our earlier piece argued that the theories of childhood underlying BRICS members’ laws are incompatible. It said CSAM is the only place where the ground is already shared. We put that to the Alliance.
Its assessment is more optimistic than ours and specific about why. Meaningful cross-border cooperation “is achievable even where states have very different domestic frameworks”, they said. The realistic starting point is agreement on shared objectives and practical areas of cooperation. These include information and knowledge exchange, capacity building, common terminology and understanding of threats, and better coordination between law enforcement agencies.
The mechanism is what makes this more than an aspiration. Cooperation can be strengthened around common challenges and evidence-based approaches. The tools are the Alliance’s Model National Response and Global Strategic Response frameworks, along with shared terminology such as the revised Terminology Guidelines. All of this works “while allowing states to retain different domestic legal and regulatory frameworks”.
That last clause is the answer to the objection our earlier piece raised. Alignment does not require harmonising domestic law. It requires agreeing on what the words mean. Common terminology is a lower bar than a common statute. It is also the bar the Alliance says can actually move things forward.
On the Rio declaration, the Alliance welcomed its references to best practices and knowledge exchange. It did not claim any engagement with the BRICS process itself.
What a chairship could still do
Two concrete things emerge from these responses. Neither requires consensus on the theory of childhood.
The first is measurement. Brazil built a baseline before its law took effect and can now measure against it. India has eight months before Section 9 commences, and no equivalent number. An Indian study of age assurance on the services children here actually use, done before commencement, would be the single most useful output of a chairship year. Cetic.br’s method is published, and its researchers are open to contact.
The second is terminology. The Alliance’s position is that shared vocabulary and an understanding of threats are achievable across divergent legal systems. It has frameworks in circulation designed for exactly that. Adopting common terminology on CSAM asks no member to change its domestic statute.
Neither is the kind of thing that produces a declaration paragraph. Both are the kind of thing that is still there in five years.
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