Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of social media algorithms on recent trends in the level of misogynistic content targeted at (a) boys and (b) young men.

The Online Safety Act (OSA) places safety duties on in-scope user-to-user and search services. Services must employ age-appropriate measures to protect children from legal abusive and hateful misogynistic content. Additionally, the largest services (category 1) will need to remove misogynistic content where it is prohibited in their terms of service.

Ofcom is the independent regulator for online safety and its draft codes include steps regarding algorithm design and operation. Ofcom will keep its codes under review.