Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing publisher liability for social media companies.

We are currently developing options for increasing the liability online platforms have for illegal content on their services. Applying publisher standards of liability to all online platforms could risk real damage to the digital economy. We will be carefully considering the options and consequences of change, and will set out our approach as part of the online harms and safety joint DCMS and Home Office White Paper on online harms which will be published by the end of the year.