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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the algorithms used by social media firms to moderate hate speech and online abuse on their platforms.

Companies are not doing enough to prevent hate speech and online abuse.

The Online Safety Bill, which has now been published in draft, will require all companies to take swift and effective action against hate speech and online abuse.

The Bill will ensure that all companies remove and limit the spread of illegal content, and that they keep their promises to stamp out this sort of abuse. Major platforms will also need to deal with abuse that falls below the criminal threshold. They will need to set and enforce clear terms and conditions on how they will tackle this content.

For the first time, companies will be held accountable for keeping their users safe on their platforms, and Ofcom will have robust powers to enforce the rules if companies do not comply.