Overview
- The voluntary guidance urges social media, dating, gaming and pornography platforms to deploy prompts before harmful posts, impose timeouts on repeat abusers and set rate or volume limits to curb coordinated pile‑ons.
- Platforms are encouraged to demonetise posts promoting misogynistic abuse and sexual violence and to diversify recommended content to reduce toxic echo chambers.
- Ofcom recommends hash‑matching to detect and remove non‑consensual intimate images and deepfakes, alongside stronger privacy defaults such as removing geolocation and blurring nude images by default.
- Sports bodies and safety groups welcomed the move after high‑profile abuse of sportswomen, while Ofcom warned ongoing harassment risks driving women out of public life.
- Campaigners want the guidance made statutory, and some tech figures and fringe platforms have criticised the approach, with 4Chan and Kiwi Farms suing Ofcom in the US and X objecting to its enforcement stance.