Social media companies have agreed to block people smugglers from posting adverts for channel crossings on their platforms.

Law enforcement and border officials from more than 40 countries attended a global immigration summit in London and have now sanctioned work with the tech firms to “design out” opportunities for criminal gangs to advertise and glorify illegal migration.

At present, the National Crime Agency and immigration officials request removal of the marketing, which last year led to 8,000 adverts promoting Channel crossings being taken down.

However, governments will now work with the tech giants attending the summit – including from Elon Musk’s X, TikTok, and Meta – to develop new technology to automatically block the adverts.

A UK government source at the summit said: “They will work with digital platforms to help them invest in strong detection and moderation tools to tackle organised immigration crime online and share trends to understand how organised crime groups use online platforms.”