Monetising harmful content
Significant regulatory gap in digital advertising allowing the monetisation of harmful content, with insufficient industry self-regulation.
Source spread
Where this theme appears
This theme appears across 6 independent accountability sources, so the source mix matters as much as the headline total.
1 inquiry rec
3 PFD reports
83 committee recs
1 DHR rec
1 Law Commission project
Browse by source
Source-grouped records are useful for tracing where a concern came from. Large sections show the 50 strongest matches for that source; counts still show the full theme total.
Prevention of Future Deaths reports(3)
Molly Russell
Concerns: The coroner noted a lack of age verification and age-specific content on online platforms, along with no separation between adult and child parts of platforms. Concerns were also raised about algorithms providing content and adverts, and the absence of parental control or access to material viewed by children.
Response (Twitter International Unlimited Company): • Twitter automatically restricts users under 18 from viewing sensitive media content and prohibits advertising of certain products to minors. • Twitter provides a 'Safe Search' mode, automatically enabled for … (AI summary)
Response (META): • Meta has implemented a tailored experience for teenagers, including defaulting under-18s to private accounts and restricting sensitive content options. • Meta employs a multi-layered approach to age verification, which … (AI summary)
Response (Snap): • Snap introduced Family Centre, an in-app tool providing parents with insight into their teen's friends and recent communications. • Snap added suicide and self-harm as a dedicated category in … (AI summary)
Response (Pinterest): • Pinterest committed to developing and testing automated signals to further limit the distribution of depressive content to teens. • Pinterest updated its self-harm policy to remove references to self-harm … (AI summary)
Response (Department for Digital Culture Media Sport): • The government introduced the Online Safety Bill to Parliament on 17 March to establish an independent regulator and protections for children online. • The government announced new offences to … (AI summary)
Overdue
Isabella Shere
Concerns: The coroner identified concerns regarding Quora's hosting of sensitive content accessible to children without age verification. The platform also has features that encourage consumption of such material and insufficient content monitoring against its own policies.
Response (Department for Science Innovation and Technology): • The Online Safety Act received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023, establishing duties on tech companies to protect users, particularly children, from harmful online content. • The Act introduced … (AI summary)
Response (Ofcom): • Ofcom has published consultations and draft Codes of Practice for illegal harms and the protection of children under the Online Safety Act 2023. • Ofcom plans to publish final … (AI summary)
Overdue
Alice Dearden
Concerns: The coroner noted that mail order businesses may be unable to perform statutory checks for suspicious transactions involving reportable poisons. Additionally, eBay's Hazardous Materials Policy does not list concentrated reportable poisons as prohibited items.
Response (Ebay): • eBay updated its Hazardous Materials Policy to explicitly include 'reportable poisons' as prohibited items. • eBay confirmed its use of proactive measures, including block filter algorithms and AI-supported monitoring, … (AI summary)
Responded
Select committee recommendations(83)— showing 50 strongest matches
#37 — Empower Ofcom to issue penalty notices to platforms for monetising harmful content on their services.
Recommendation: There are insufficient disincentives for bad practice in the digital advertising market. Bad actors can exploit the ecosystem, monetising harmful content through major platforms. Following Principle 3, Ofcom should be empowered to give penalty notices to platforms when they allow …
Response attribution not verified
#36 — Mandate ‘Know Your Customer’ checks and platform data disclosure for digital advertising supply chain transparency.
Recommendation: The internet, and social media, could not operate without digital advertising. Given its implications for public safety, as per Principle 5, there needs to be heightened transparency in the market processes of online advertising. Government should mandate ‘Know Your Customer’ …
Response attribution not verified
#35 — Mandate the Advertising Standards Authority to establish comprehensive digital advertising ecosystem guidelines for all actors.
Recommendation: To tackle the incentive behind amplified misinformation—namely, the monetisation of harmful content—there should be clear and enforceable standards for digital advertising market processes, as well as advertising content. Following our Principles 1, 3 and 5, government should ask the Advertising …
Response attribution not verified
#34 — Establish new arms-length body or extend Ofcom's powers to regulate digital advertising supply chain.
Recommendation: Tackling online harm means addressing the principles that incentivise and monetise its spread. In line with Principle 3, responsibility, the government should create a new arms-length body—not funded by industry—to regulate and scrutinise the process of digital advertising, covering the …
Response attribution not verified
#33 — Significant regulatory gap in digital advertising allows harmful content monetisation; self-regulation is insufficient.
Recommendation: There is a regulatory gap around digital advertising, as much of the regulation and interventions have been industry-led and focused on tackling harmful advertising content, as opposed to the monetisation of harmful content through advertising. We are not convinced that …
Response attribution not verified
#32 — Google's monetisation of misinformation highlights systemic failures within the digital advertising industry.
Recommendation: In particular, we were concerned by evidence that Google may have helped to monetise misinformation relating to the attacks, contributing to the violence. This is unacceptable, and is just one example of a much wider problem with the digital advertising …
Response attribution not verified
#31 — Under-regulated digital advertising market incentivises and monetises harmful content, often without advertisers' knowledge.
Recommendation: The global digital advertising market is overcomplicated, opaque and under-regulated, operating through an enormous, automated and inaccessible supply chain. This directly leads to the production, viral spread and monetisation of harmful and deceptive content, often without advertisers’ knowledge. Platforms and …
Response attribution not verified
#26 — Review Online Safety Act's fitness for purpose in tackling hateful online extremism.
Recommendation: The Government should review whether the existing legislative framework, including the Online Safety Act, is fit for purpose in tackling hateful extremism. The review should specifically consider whether further regulation is required to tackle the posting of and promotion of …
Response attribution not verified
#25 — Online platforms facilitate religious hatred with inadequate regulation and consequences.
Recommendation: At present people can stir up religious hatred online in the knowledge that their comments are unlikely to be removed and, except in the most extreme cases, are unlikely to face any consequences for their actions. While some individuals have …
Response attribution not verified
#35 —
Recommendation: The Government’s online advertising taskforce should review the work and impact of brand safety organisations on news publisher revenue.
Response attribution not verified
#34 —
Recommendation: The rise of brand safety organisations has raised complex questions about the extent and implications of their work.
Response attribution not verified
#27 — Extend legislation to prohibit individuals or companies enabling or profiting from another's online prostitution.
Recommendation: Legislation which bans third party profit-taking from the prostitution of another person should be extended to prohibit any individual or company from enabling and/ or profiting from the prostitution of another person, including facilitation that takes place via online, digital …
Response attribution not verified
#7 —
Recommendation: We recommend that the Government introduces mandatory restrictions on high-risk and addictive design features, such as infinite scrolling, disappearing messages and algorithmic messages for under-18s, with appropriate age-related restrictions enabled by default, rather than relying on voluntary measures or user …
Response status not verified
#3 —
Recommendation: The Committee is clear that the companies whose platforms are responsible for these harms cannot be left to self-regulate. We recommend that the Government treats online harms to children explicitly as a safeguarding and public health issue, rather than relying …
Response status not verified
#1 —
Recommendation: The Committee concludes that online harms affecting children are widespread, severe and systemic. The evidence we heard demonstrates clear links between children’s exposure to harmful online content (including material promoting self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, misogyny and sexual exploitation) and serious …
Response status not verified
#17 —
Recommendation: The move online by pension scammers has been a recurring theme of our inquiry. Regulators appear powerless to hold online firms to account for hosting scam advertisements in the same way they would be able to for traditional media. Scammers …
Response attribution not verified
#29 — Utilise existing legislation to investigate and hold accountable websites facilitating sexual exploitation trafficking.
Recommendation: Until new legislation is introduced prohibiting profiting from or enabling the prostitution of another person, law enforcement should utilise all available legislation to investigate and hold accountable websites that facilitate trafficking for sexual exploitation. This includes legislation prohibiting companies from …
Response attribution not verified
#28 — Implement all measures to tackle online sexual exploitation trafficking, including targeting money laundering.
Recommendation: The Home Office and law enforcement should be taking all measures possible to tackle trafficking for sexual exploitation online, so that it is no longer so easy or profitable for perpetrators to make money from sexual exploitation, including by ‘following …
Response attribution not verified
#26 — Websites advertising prostitution facilitate sexual exploitation; collaboration with them is inexplicable and ineffective.
Recommendation: Websites advertising prostitution significantly facilitate trafficking for sexual exploitation. The threat posed by websites advertising prostitution, the continuing failure of their owners to implement even the most basic safeguards against pimping and trafficking, and the sheer scale of trafficking for …
Response attribution not verified
#38 —
Recommendation: Pending any legislative changes, the FCA should continue to work with online platforms such as Google to remove misleading and fraudulent adverts as quickly as possible, to protect customers from scams. (Paragraph 193) The Financial Conduct Authority’s Regulation of London …
Response attribution not verified
#37 —
Recommendation: We recommend that the Government should include measures to address fraud via online advertising in the Online Safety Bill, in the interests of preventing further harm to customers being offered fraudulent financial products.
Response attribution not verified
#35 —
Recommendation: It is very disappointing to see that despite the numerous representations made to the Government, measures to address fraud via online advertising have not been included in the draft Online Safety Bill. This is a missed opportunity to act and …
Response attribution not verified
#21 —
Recommendation: Safe harbour provisions that have been transposed into UK law have profoundly impacted the market for digital music consumption. YouTube’s dominance of the music streaming market shows that the market has tipped. Safe harbour gives services that host user-generated content …
Response attribution not verified
#21 —
Recommendation: The Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill concluded that self-regulation of online platforms had failed. It is true that there have been many failings, and it is right that action should now be taken to place more responsibility …
Response attribution not verified
#39 —
Recommendation: We recommend that the Advertising Standards Authority introduce a requirement to the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising (CAP Code) for virtual influencers to be watermarked. Intermediaries
Response attribution not verified
#4 —
Recommendation: 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 …
Response attribution not verified
#15 —
Recommendation: The suppression of vital online information about women’s health is a pressing issue, which requires immediate action. The assurances provided to us by the Minister were inadequate. We do not share the Government’s confidence that the Online Safety Act 2023’s …
Response attribution not verified
#17 —
Recommendation: The Government should monitor how effectively any new communications offences that are enacted—in particular, the Law Commission’s proposed harm-based offence—protect people from, and provide redress for victims of, online abuse, while also respecting freedom of expression online. We recommend that …
Response attribution not verified
#3 —
Recommendation: Our predecessor Petitions Committee’s report concluded that self-regulation of social media had failed. Despite the user safety tools and innovations platforms have introduced since then, these companies have continued to place insufficient priority on user safety to protect users from …
Response attribution not verified
#17 — Online safety compliance will take time, as shown by video-sharing platform regulation experience.
Recommendation: Ofcom told us that it had undertaken a similar approach in its regulation of video- sharing platforms from November 2020. It had worked with pornography providers, some of whom had, as a result, introduced age estimation techniques. However, there had …
Response attribution not verified
#58 — Deliver commitments from Fraud Strategy, including online fraud charter, by year-end.
Recommendation: We support the commitment in the Government’s Fraud Strategy to “make the tech sector commit to protect their customers through legislation and voluntary commitments” and “help banks slow down suspicious payments.” We urge the Home Office to deliver on those …
Response attribution not verified
#2 —
Recommendation: These harms are not accidental or isolated, but occur because of platform design choices, including algorithmic recommendation systems, infinite scrolling, autoplay and private messaging features, which repeatedly expose children to harmful or exploitative content at a scale which reactive moderation …
Response status not verified
#22 —
Recommendation: We note that the CMA has developed a pro-competition framework for tech companies with ‘strategic market status’ that dominate digital markets. The CMA should consider exploring designating YouTube’s streaming services as having strategic market status to encourage competition with its …
Response attribution not verified
#17 —
Recommendation: Music curators play an important role in the discovery and consumption of digital music and are influential in how creators are remunerated. It is, therefore, unsurprising that music creators are putting more resources into catching the eye of these curators. …
Response attribution not verified
#16 —
Recommendation: The Government has repeatedly told us that it will not implement in UK law provisions akin to those established by the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. We accept that the Directive is not a silver bullet to …
Response attribution not verified
#15 —
Recommendation: Artists and their representatives face a systemic lack of transparency from both music companies and the streaming services that license their works. This exacerbates the inequities of creator remuneration by creating information asymmetries and preventing them from undertaking their right …
Response attribution not verified
#14 —
Recommendation: As long as the major record labels also dominate the market for song rights through their publishing operations, it is hard to see whether the song will be valued fairly as a result. It is well-evidenced that redressing the disparities …
Response attribution not verified
#13 —
Recommendation: Despite the general consensus that direct licensing between the record industry and streaming services is positive, there are ongoing concerns about the majors’ 106 Economics of music streaming position in negotiation, which allows them to benefit at the expense of …
Response attribution not verified
#12 —
Recommendation: We recommend that the Government concurrently expand creator rights by introducing a right to recapture works and a right to contract adjustment where an artist’s royalties are disproportionately low compared to the success of their music into the Copyright, Designs …
Response attribution not verified
#11 —
Recommendation: The Government must make sure that UK law is not enabling the outcome of market dominance. This means that independent labels must be supported to challenge the majors’ dominance and creators must be empowered to offset the disparity in negotiating …
Response attribution not verified
#10 —
Recommendation: There is no doubt that the major music groups currently dominate the music industry, both in terms of overall market share in recording and (to a lesser extent) in publishing, but also through vertical integration, their acquisition of competing services …
Response attribution not verified
#1 —
Recommendation: Streaming has undoubtedly helped save the music industry following two decades of digital piracy but it is clear that what has been saved does not work for everyone. The issues ostensibly created by streaming simply reflect more fundamental, structural problems …
Response attribution not verified
#14 —
Recommendation: We reiterate our strong belief that the Government should include measures to address fraud via online advertising in the Online Safety Bill, in the interests of preventing further harm to customers being offered fraudulent financial products.
Response attribution not verified
#13 —
Recommendation: We agree with the Joint Committee that the Draft Online Safety Bill should be amended so as to include fraud offences in the list of “relevant offences” in Clause 41(4) of the Bill. Fraudulent content should be designated as “priority …
Response attribution not verified
#97 —
Recommendation: We recommend that the CMA report to our Committee on the progress, costs, and results of their 2020 Facebook Ireland Ltd. undertakings. In doing so they should also provide updates on their progress securing undertakings from other social media platforms. …
Response attribution not verified
#86 —
Recommendation: We recommend that the ASA be given statutory powers to enforce the CAP Code. These powers should be considered as part of the Government’s upcoming Online Advertising Programme. Appropriate funding arrangements should also be considered to ensure that the ASA …
Response attribution not verified
#69 —
Recommendation: We recommend that the remit of the CAP code be extended by removing the requirement for editorial ‘control’ to determine whether content constitutes an advertisement.
Response attribution not verified
#44 —
Recommendation: We recommend that the Government commission an industry partner to develop a code of conduct for influencer marketing alongside relevant stakeholders. The Government should then promote this code as an example of best practice for deals between influencers and brands …
Response attribution not verified
#28 —
Recommendation: There are clear examples of market dominance in digital markets globally which have been well documented. We heard from witnesses, and during our visit to the US, strong evidence of abuses of market dominance which warrant intervention. We encourage the …
Response attribution not verified
#9 —
Recommendation: We are glad that the Government appears to be expediting the introduction of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill, which will be vital to redressing the unbalanced relationship between the large digital platforms and local news publishers (among many …
Response attribution not verified
Independent reviews(7)
Furman Review — Rec 21
Strategic recommendation E: The CMA should conduct a market study into the digital advertising market encompassing the entire value chain, using its investigatory powers to examine whether competition is working effectively and whether consumer harms are arising.
Other
Fisher Review (Part 2) — Rec 2
Introduce a new corporate criminal offence for providers of regulated user-to-user services (as defined under the Online Safety Act 2023) who fail to prevent fraud on their platforms. This offence would closely mirror the recently introduced ‘failure-to-prevent’ fraud offence under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which holds …
Justice & Legal
Bailey Review on Childhood — Rec 5
Making it easier for parents to block adult and age-restricted material from the internet: To provide a consistent level of protection across all media, as a matter of urgency, the internet industry should ensure that customers must make an active choice over what sort of content they want to allow …
Education
Bailey Review on Childhood — Rec 4
Introducing Age Rating for Music Videos. Government should consult as a matter of priority on whether music videos should continue to be treated differently from other genres, and whether the exemption from the Video Recordings Act 1984 and 2010, which allows them to be sold without a rating or certificate, …
Education
Bailey Review on Childhood — Rec 3
Ensuring the content of pre-watershed television programming better meets parents’ expectations. There are concerns among parents about the content of certain programmes shown before the watershed. The watershed was introduced to protect children, and pre-watershed programming should therefore be developed and regulated with a greater weight towards the attitudes and …
Education
Bailey Review on Childhood — Rec 2
Reducing the amount of on-street advertising containing sexualised imagery in locations where children are likely to see it. The advertising industry should take into account the social responsibility clause of the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) code when considering placement of advertisements with sexualised imagery near schools, in the same …
Education
Bailey Review on Childhood — Rec 1
Ensuring that magazines and newspapers with sexualised images on their covers are not in easy sight of children. Retail associations in the news industry should do more to encourage observance of the voluntary code of practice on the display of magazines and newspapers with sexualised images on their covers. Publishers …
Education