Report Harmful Content has 2 main functions:
In simple terms, harmful content is anything online which causes a person distress or harm. This encompasses a huge amount of content and can be very subjective depending on who is doing the viewing; what may be harmful to one person might not be considered an issue by someone else.
Our focus is on:
We can review reports made about the following eight types of online harm:
We studied the community guidelines of several different platforms and these areas of content are likely to violate terms. Also, based on our previous experience running two helplines, The Professionals Online Safety Helpline and The Revenge Porn Helpline, we know we can offer further specialist advice and support in these areas.
You might wonder why we don’t offer reporting support for other types of online harm; this is because there are other routes to resolution where other categories of harmful content is concerned. For example, consider a piece of far right propaganda on a commonly used social networking site: this can be reported to the platform under their extremist content policies and then to the national Action Counters Terrorism service to investigate further. Our involvement here is about signposting to the right places to report such content. The Advice section on our website is dedicated to this.
We recognise that harmful content online can be part of a bigger problem, and as such have signposted to other services that can help. We also provide the police with information about the various reporting mechanisms available to them as law enforcers. Our work with industry continues and you’ll also find links to the most up to date transparency reports for the most commonly used social networking platforms along with links to the safety centres of other social networking platforms on the site.