LONDON — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has pledged to crack down on hate and terrorist content in Britain, the country’s media regulator said Friday.
Ofcom said X’s public commitments include restricting access in the U.K. to accounts operated by or on behalf of terrorist groups that the country has banned.
The platform also promised to review suspected illegal terrorist and hate content within 24 hours on average, and to assess 85% of the material no more than 48 hours after users have flagged it, officials said.
A spokesperson for X in the U.K. did not respond to a request for comment.
In response to concerns from some civil society groups that X failed to follow up after illegal content was flagged by users, X will engage with experts on how to improve its reporting systems, Ofcom said. X will submit quarterly performance data over a 12-month period so the regular can compare its performance against these targets.
The regulator said there’s evidence that terrorist content and illegal hate speech is “persisting” on social media sites and that it expects tech companies to take “firm action.”
“This is of particular importance in the U.K. following a number of recent hate motivated crimes suffered by the country’s Jewish community,” Oliver Griffiths, director of Ofcom’s online safety group, said.
Britain’s Jewish community, which numbers about 300,000 people, has faced growing attacks online and in the streets, including a string of arson attacks and a double stabbing that have sparked fear and anger among Jews.
X and Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok faced intensifying global scrutiny earlier this year over after Grok, which can be accessed through X, pumped out nonconsensual deepfake images.
Ofcom responded by launching an investigation into whether Grok failed to protect users from illegal content, which Griffiths said was ongoing.
The Grok controversy also resulted in European Union regulators targeting X over whether it has done enough to contain the spread of illegal content. French prosecutors, meanwhile, sought charges last week against Musk and X including denial of crimes against humanity.
