Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what consideration she has given to the potential merits of restricting or removing monetisation for accounts that repeatedly promote extremist content, harassment, misogyny or misinformation.

Under the Online Safety Act, platforms must tackle hateful online content where it is illegal or harmful to children. They must take steps to ensure their algorithms do not target users with this content. Under new duties to be introduced next year, the largest user-to-user platforms will be required to set out in Terms of Service content prohibited on their services, then apply these Terms consistently.

In Protecting What Matters, the government’s social cohesion strategy, DSIT and DCMS committed to developing options for reducing the inadvertent monetisation of harmful online content. We have engaged with platforms, the ad industry, and civil society on this issue.