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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that social media companies prevent misinformation on their platforms.

Under the Online Safety Bill, all social media companies subject to the safety duties will be forced to take measures to remove illegal content online that is in scope of the Bill, including illegal misinformation and disinformation once they become aware of it. In addition, if a social media platform is likely to be accessed by children, they will have to protect them from a wide range of harmful content including misinformation and disinformation.

We are already working closely with the major social media platforms to encourage them to cooperate at speed to swiftly remove disinformation and coordinated inauthentic or manipulated behaviour, as per their Terms of Service.