Recommendation 10

Ofcom itself is only required to consider complaints from organisations about systemic issues arising from a service provider and impacting on online safety. It has no specific powers to take action, or compel regulated service providers to take action, on individual pieces of content or to get providers to offer redress to individual users on a case-by-case basis.16 Ofcom explained that the scale of potentially harmful, online material would make it impossible for it to respond to individual complaints and it must, 8 Q 9 9 Q 42; C&AG’s Report, para 1.12 10 C&AG’s Report, para 3 11 Q 4; C&AG’s Report, para 1.8 12 C&AG’s Report, para 1.8, figure 4 13 Qq 4, 6 14 C&AG’s Report, para 1.16 15 Q 26 16 Q 26; C&AG’s Report, para 1.16 10 Preparedness for online safety regulation instead, rely on service providers to have appropriate systems and processes to take action on complaints. It told us that Facebook alone moderates hundreds of thousands of items every hour.17