When one family settled down to watch 2010 family-friendly movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid from Amazon’s Prime Video platform, they were in for a bit of a shock.

UK regulator Ofcom has found Amazon to be in breach of its code after a viewer who rented Diary of a Wimpy Kid to watch with his kids was in fact served with Love & Other Drugs, a 15-rated romcom starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway featuring “strong sex, sex references and language”. And more than 100 viewers were subject to the same error, Ofcom revealed.

“The complainant said they had rented the film for their young children to watch, but after the selected content began playing, the complainant became aware that the film that had actually played was a different film containing strong sexual content,” Ofcom said in a review of the breach today.

This complainant tried to get in touch with Amazon three times but failed, and so turned to Ofcom.

Furthermore, 122 customers attempted to access Diary of a Wimpy Kid during the period in September that Amazon was responding to customer complaints about the SNAFU, which was fixed after 48 hours, Amazon said.

Amazon apologized for the error and said it had requested its content partner provide unique identifiers for all films, and had updated its existing internal processes to help prevent a similar error in the future, Ofcom said. Ofcom pointed out that the movie was available to rent on Prime Video rather than being available via a Prime Video sub, and therefore wasn’t subject to the same Prime Video child profiles.

It was ruled in breach of the section of Ofcom’s broadcasting code that regulates harmful material and protection of under-18s. “Ofcom acknowledged Amazon’s assurances that it had updated its procedures to prevent this issue occurring again,” the regulator concluded.

Amazon is regulated by Ofcom, which was strengthened by the recent Media Bill in terms of its ability to chide the streamers over harmful content. It first fell foul of the Ofcom code latst year when a viewer took issue with “the inclusion of a baby in scenes depicting sexual activity between adults” in a Filipino movie from 2022.