Understanding the UK’s New Online Safety Act: What It Means for Users, Platforms & You

The digital world has become an indispensable part of our lives — but with that connection comes a darker side. Over the past decade, online spaces have evolved from places of information and community into complex ecosystems where harmful content, abuse, and misinformation can spread rapidly and widely.

From cyberbullying, harassment, and grooming, to the viral spread of extremist material, self-harm encouragement, and child sexual exploitation, online harms have become an urgent social issue. The risks are no longer limited to what users post — algorithms themselves can amplify divisive or distressing content, exposing users, especially children, to repeated trauma or manipulation.

At the same time, disinformation and “fake news” campaigns have undermined trust in institutions and media, while privacy-invading practices, such as data misuse and opaque recommendation systems, have eroded users’ control over their digital lives. The rapid growth of AI-generated content and deepfakes adds yet another dimension of risk — making it harder to distinguish truth from falsehood, authenticity from deception.

The UK’s Online Safety Act 2023 (formerly known as the Internet Safety Bill) is the government’s most ambitious attempt yet to tackle these escalating online threats. It aims to make the internet safer for children and vulnerable users, reduce the prevalence of illegal and harmful material, and hold tech platforms legally accountable for the design and operation of their systems.

In short, the law seeks to shift responsibility away from the individual user and toward the platforms themselves — forcing online services to actively manage risk, enforce safety by design, and prioritise user protection over pure engagement or profit.

What Is the Online Safety Act?

Though passed in October 2023, the Act is being phased in over several years. In essence, it imposes legal duties on a wide range of online services—social media platforms, messaging apps, search engines, forums, and more—with the goal of making the internet safer, particularly for children and vulnerable groups.

Unlike some earlier measures (e.g. the Digital Economy Act’s attempted age verification), this law is broader in scope, with stronger powers for enforcement, obligations for design and transparency, and significant financial penalties for non-compliance.

Core Duties Placed on Platforms

Here are the main obligations the law places on online services:

• Prevent and remove illegal content

  Platforms must take steps to reduce the risk their service is used for criminal activity, and they must remove illegal material when it appears. Search engines, too, must filter illegal content from their results.

• Protect children from harmful content

  Services likely to be accessed by minors must prevent them encountering harmful but legal content (bullying, self-harm content, content encouraging risky behaviour), and ensure age verification or assurance systems for more sensitive content.

• “Safety by design” and transparency

  Platforms must carry out risk assessments, consider harm when designing features, and be transparent about how moderation, algorithms, and reporting systems work.

• User reporting, redress and accountability

  Users (especially children and parents) must have easy ways to report harmful content and get responses. Also, platforms must designate a senior executive responsible for safety.

Enforcement, Penalties & Oversight

Before enforcement begins, it’s important to understand that the Online Safety Act doesn’t just outline principles — it introduces real consequences for inaction. One of the key criticisms of previous online safety efforts was their lack of enforceability: platforms could promise to improve moderation or adopt safety measures, yet fail to follow through without meaningful repercussions.

To ensure accountability, the Act gives regulators powerful tools to monitor, investigate, and sanction non-compliant services. This framework is designed to make safety obligations as serious and binding as financial or privacy regulations — placing real legal weight behind user protection.

• Regulator: Ofcom (the UK communications regulator) will oversee compliance, issue codes of practice, and investigate breaches.

• Fines & penalties: Violations can attract fines up to £18 million or 10% of a company’s global turnover (whichever is higher).

• Blocking or suppression: Non-complying services risk being blocked in the UK or having features suppressed.

• Criminal liability: In serious or repeated violations, senior executives may face criminal liability.

What This Means for Users & Businesses

For users (especially parents & young people):

• Greater protection against exposure to harmful content (e.g. self-harm, bullying, dangerous challenges).

• Expect more age gating, filters, or restricted access to certain types of content.

• More clarity about how platforms moderate content and how to report problems.

• However, there may be tradeoffs in terms of privacy (e.g. how age validation is done) or delays in content posting while systems check compliance.

For platforms, tech companies, startups:

• Substantial compliance burden: technical, legal, operational.

• Need to conduct risk assessments, redesign features, adopt moderation tools, and maintain audit trails.

• Smaller services may struggle more with costs and complexity.

• Pressure to balance safety with user experience—overzealous removal may frustrate users; under-enforcement risks penalties.

• Navigating ambiguity: many requirements are defined by upcoming codes of practice, so uncertainty remains.

Key Challenges & Criticisms

1. Chilling effects on speech

To avoid liability, platforms might remove borderline or controversial content even when it’s lawful.

Real-life impact: For example, social media companies already faced criticism for taking down posts that discussed sensitive political issues or satire during elections, fearing they could be seen as spreading misinformation. Under the new Act, this risk intensifies — artists, activists, and journalists may find their content suppressed by over-cautious moderation algorithms or automated filters that can’t always distinguish context or intent.

2. Encryption and privacy

The tension between scanning for illicit content and preserving end-to-end encryption remains unresolved. While the government softened some language around mandatory scanning, the risk persists.

Real-life impact: WhatsApp and Signal both publicly warned that if forced to break encryption to comply with content-scanning requirements, they could withdraw from the UK rather than compromise user privacy. This creates a serious dilemma — between protecting children from abuse and safeguarding citizens’ right to private, secure communication.

3. Evasion & loopholes

Even with strict controls, users can find ways to bypass restrictions.

Real-life impact: After age restrictions were introduced on adult sites in other countries, users quickly turned to VPNs and anonymous browsers to evade checks. Similarly, extremist or harmful communities often migrate to encrypted or decentralised platforms (like Telegram or peer-to-peer networks) where moderation is limited or non-existent — undermining the law’s intent and pushing harmful activity further underground.

4. Delayed clarity

Much depends on secondary legislation, Ofcom codes, and evolving technical standards — meaning uncertainty will persist for years.

Real-life impact: Many businesses, particularly smaller social platforms or forums, still don’t know exactly how to classify themselves or what compliance will cost. The absence of detailed Ofcom codes has left developers unsure whether their services will fall under “high-risk” categories. This limbo delays investment and innovation while increasing anxiety about future enforcement.

5. Disproportionate impact on small players

Big tech firms can afford dedicated compliance teams, lawyers, and infrastructure. Smaller startups and niche communities cannot.

Real-life impact: A small UK-based social platform or discussion forum might have to invest heavily in automated moderation tools, legal audits, and age-verification systems — costs that could easily exceed their annual revenue. This may discourage innovation and reduce competition, consolidating more power in the hands of global tech giants who can more easily absorb regulatory burdens.

What to Watch for in the next 12 months

• Ofcom’s published codes of practice (for children’s safety, illegal content, transparency, etc.).

• How age verification / assurance systems are implemented in practice.

• Enforcement actions and fines—will Ofcom take on big names or only smaller offenders initially?

• How platforms adapt moderation policies, algorithmic design, and user appeal systems.

• Legal challenges on free speech, privacy, or misuse of powers.

• International implications: how UK regulation may influence or clash with regulation elsewhere (especially regarding encryption, cross-border platforms, jurisdictional issues).

Final Thoughts

The Online Safety Act is ambitious. It signals a shift from soft self-regulation of the internet toward legally binding accountability for platforms. Its success depends not just on good laws, but careful and transparent implementation, ongoing dialogue with civil society, tech providers, and constant adaptation to evolving threats.

For users, it promises stronger protection—but also tradeoffs and uncertainties. For businesses, it presents a formidable compliance challenge and an incentive to bake safety into design, not bolt it on as an afterthought.