Asked by: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the value of advertising revenue to websites hosting illegal content, as set out in the recent report by Adalytics.
Answered by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The government continually assesses the impact of online services’ activities on UK citizens from a wide range of sources.
The Online Safety Act establishes a new regulatory regime for online services including platforms and search engines. It gives these services duties to tackle illegal content and protect children from harmful content. Ofcom is the regulator for this regime. It has strong enforcement powers if platforms fail to comply. These include business disruption measures. Through these powers, third-party service providers can be required, with court approval, to withdraw services from a non-compliant platform. For example, this could include a requirement on advertising services to withdraw from a particular non-compliant platform.