The UK’s Online Safety Act explained: what you need to know
The Online Safety Act became law in October 2023, aimed at improving online safety—especially for children—by placing obligations on user-generated content hosts and search engine providers .
It introduces a duty of care for platforms, requiring risk assessments, illegal‑content mitigation, and protections for children’s safety. Ofcom enforces these requirements and can impose significant penalties, including fines of up to £18 million or 10% of global turnover .
Platforms labeled “Category 1”—essentially the largest global services—must additionally safeguard journalistic and democratically important content, and uphold adult safety standards .
The law enforces robust age verification for content involving pornography, self‑harm, suicide, and eating disorders, with services required to use age‑verification or estimation systems to block under‑18s .
Other critical elements include new criminal offenses—such as cyber‑flashing, threats, epilepsy trolling, and encouraging serious self‑harm—plus obligations for record‑keeping, redress, and preserving freedom of expression .
There is significant criticism due to risks to privacy, free expression, and end‑to‑end encryption. Some argue the law could enable censorship, mass surveillance, or force platforms like Wikipedia to implement invasive age checks. However, the government has paused enforcement of encryption‑weakening provisions, citing technical infeasibility .
