Ofcom Says X's First Hate and Terror Report Appears to Show Some Improvements, With Ongoing Concerns, and Narrows Its Grok Investigation

Ofcom published an update on 14 October on X's handling of hate and terror content and on its Grok investigation, under the Online Safety Act. It says X's first quarterly report on user-reported hate and terror content appears to show some improvements in action times, within the timeframes in X's commitments.

Ofcom says it remains concerned about how effectively X takes down illegal hate and terror content, and that it has had mixed reports about X's sustained delivery of its commitment to engage with third-party experts. Its next analysis is due early in the new year.

Grok

Ofcom says X has made changes so that content labelled as pornography is consistently restricted for accounts that have not completed age assurance, and that it continues to monitor those checks. It has therefore decided to focus the rest of its Grok investigation on X's illegal-content duties and its complaints and reporting duties. The standalone Grok service is separate: Ofcom says SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) restricted the service from being used to generate or view images of real people, restricted UK IP addresses from viewing, generating or sharing pornographic content on its standalone image tool, and stopped companion chatbots having sexually explicit conversations with UK users. If Ofcom finds reasonable grounds for a breach, it issues a provisional view and X gets a full chance to respond before any final decision.

What it means for advertisers

This is a regulator update about a platform, not an ad ruling. For anyone commissioning video that will run on X, it is context for brand-safety conversations. Our guide to shooting paid social video ads covers the production side of the same briefs.