Recommendation 4

Harmful extremist content is circulating widely online, driven by engagement and profit-maximising algorithms, influencer-led dissemination, and decentralised extremist ecosystems. These systems promote content designed to provoke outrage and fear, often purely for commercial reasons, and the speed and scale of dissemination have outpaced the capacity of moderation and removal tools. Content designed to attract, recruit and radicalise individuals is often targeted at young people and other vulnerable users. This is contributing to emerging trends in extremism, including the increasing engagement of young people and the rise of hybrid belief systems, nihilistic violent extremism and violence fixation. The emergence of com networks represents a serious and escalating threat, with decentralised groups incentivising violence, coercion and criminality among predominantly young males. The evolving and cross-cutting nature of com networks requires an agile, coordinated, cross- government approach to avoid siloed responses that would be fragmented and ineffective. (Conclusion, Paragraph 60)