Home Secretary Amber Rudd says YouTube and social media companies must do more to remove content which glamorises violence and gang culture after a spate of killings in London.
The murder rate in the capital is now higher than that of New York City as lawlessness threatens to return to the streets seven years after the London riots.
Since Easter Devoy Stapleton and Israel Ogunsola have been stabbed to death and Tanesha Melbourne-Blake and Amaan Shakoor fatally shot in various locations around the capital.
On Monday the government published the Serious Violence Strategy after a review into the increase in homicides, knife crime and gun crime.
鈥淎s I speak, gangs are posting videos and music online that document, encourage and glamorise violence and goad and threaten others 鈥� and the repercussions can be deadly,鈥� Rudd said.
鈥淟ast August 15-year-old Jermaine Goupall was knifed to death in South London in the climax of a feud between rival gangs posting mocking videos on YouTube.
鈥淚t is already an offence to incite, assist or encourage violence online and I expect to see social media companies standing by their obligations to remove this kind of content as necessary.
鈥淏ut social media companies must do more: I am calling on them to review their terms and conditions and make it clear that that they will not host any content linked to gangs or gang violence.
鈥淲hen I called on social media companies to deal with terrorist content on their platforms, they listened and took action [and] I鈥檓 asking them to do so again.
鈥淔ighting crime and keeping each other safe isn鈥檛 just the responsibility of government, it鈥檚 everybody鈥檚 responsibility.鈥�
The government has also launched #knifefree, an online advertising campaign raising awareness about the risks and consequences of carrying knives, and will introduce new laws within weeks to make it more difficult to purchase guns, knives and acid 鈥� for example banning the delivery of knives bought online to residential addresses.
Tory politician Rudd said the evidence coming out of the review does not support Labour鈥檚 claim that a reduction in the number of police officers on the streets has been to blame for the increase in violence, while she described the supporting theory that dwindling youth services in the country could also have had an impact as 鈥渟implistic鈥�.
She said that an increase in drug use appears to be the biggest driver of the increase in violent crime and announced 拢3.6 million funding for a new National County Lines Co-ordination Centre to tackle the problem of city-based drugs networks expanding around the UK.
She also announced an 拢11m Early Intervention Youth Fund to help communities run early intervention and prevention programmes for young people at risk of getting involved in violence.