At last, the fightback against web anarchy

DAY after day, the already deeply tarnished reputations of the filth- peddling, tax- dodging, terror- abetting internet behemoths sink lower into the mire.

Apparently above the law, they allow on their platforms the most depraved content, from extreme pornography to terrorist propaganda and images of child abuse.

In the latest sickening twist, we learn that rape apologists, anti-Semites and hate preachers receive taxpayers’ money when government- funded adverts appear alongside their YouTube videos.

Adverts for the Home Office, the Royal Navy and the BBC have been run beside videos by the likes of US white nationalist and ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Major commercial brands have also been affected. Adverts for Argos, Sainsbury’s and The Guardian appeared next to videos by US preacher Steven Anderson, who praised a terror attack on a gay nightclub.

Google, which owns YouTube, rightly stands accused of profiting from hatred.

But while this lax approach is deeply disconcerting, it is hardly a surprise. For many years, Google – like Facebook and Twitter – has wilfully turned a blind eye to poisonous content.

Last week, the BBC reported that of the 100 sexualised and lewd images of children it reported to Facebook site monitors, only 18 were taken down.

The other 82 – including a freeze frame apparently from an abuse video – were allowed to remain. Worse, when it was confronted over its pusillanimous response, the site reported the BBC to the police.

Last year, the home affairs committee condemned all three web giants for acting as the ‘lifeblood of Islamic State’, by ‘consciously failing’ to stop terrorists and their sympathisers from targeting the vulnerable with bile on their sites.

As senior security officials have warned, tech firms often refuse to help the authorities identify suspected terrorists, citing privacy concerns. But at the same time, they ruthlessly invade the privacy of their users by gathering their personal information and exploiting it commercially.

Meanwhile, endless fake news and blatant libels are spread with impunity around the world. Unlike newspapers in this country, which follow strict regulations, content from web publishers such as Facebook and Google is almost entirely unregulated.

Today the Mail adds to the already lengthy charge sheet. Alongside all the other destructive influences on their sites, we reveal how these internet giants publish material aimed at young women which glamorises eating disorders and self-harm.

And when this newspaper’s reporters began investigating backstreet beauty clinics offering to inject young women with dangerous lip-fillers, where do you think some of the adverts appeared? Facebook, of course.

For any parent already worried about what their children are viewing online, it is enough to make them hurl the computer out of the window.

But at last the tide may be turning. In a hugely significant step, ministers yesterday removed government advertising from YouTube, and hauled in its executives for a dressing down. And in another welcome move, major advertising firms are asking their clients if they want to pull YouTube ads. Rightly, no chief executive wants their branding to pop up alongside a hate video.

But the response must not end there. Concerted political action is needed to impose regulatory controls over the anarchic internet. Unlike David Cameron, whose close colleagues were hand-in-glove with the web giants, Theresa May has no such questionable relationships.

She is therefore free to confront the issue head on. She could start by instructing HMRC officials to look at how Google shifts its earnings around the world to avoid tax.