Online Safety Act: Risky Rules, Must-Have Fixes
The Online Safety Act arrived with ambitious goals: to curb illegal and harmful content, protect children, and hold platforms accountable. But from the start, the statute has posed a thorny operational question for Ofcom — if the rulebook is unclear, enforcement becomes a lottery. That uncertainty sits at the heart of current debates about whether the Online Safety Act will deliver safer online spaces, or instead create new risks for free expression, competition and innovation.
Where the law meets practice
The Online Safety Act casts a wide net. It requires a range of services — from major social networks to search engines and smaller “user-to-user” platforms — to conduct risk assessments, implement content-moderation systems, publish transparency reports, and take specific steps to protect children and adults from defined harms. Ofcom was given powers to set codes of practice, supervise compliance and impose sanctions, even blocking services that defy the rules.
Translating those statutory aims into operational codes has exposed several recurring problems. First, the law’s language leaves ambiguous which services are captured and how “harm” should be operationalised across different contexts. Second, the technical challenge of moderating content at scale—especially for nuanced categories like “legal but harmful”—requires sophisticated classifiers, extensive human review and ongoing tuning. Those systems are resource-intensive and error-prone. Third, enforcement capacity is a real constraint: Ofcom must write clear, proportionate rules and then police a fast-moving digital ecosystem without chilling lawful speech or strengthening incumbent platforms.
Why the ambiguity matters
Ambiguity in scope and duty creates practical and legal risks. Smaller firms and start-ups warn that compliance costs and legal uncertainty will raise barriers to entry, consolidate market power and divert resources from innovation. Different compliance strategies across platforms could lead to inconsistent user experiences, with automated takedowns favored over nuanced moderation because they’re cheaper and defensible in enforcement settings.
Civil-society groups and safety advocates, meanwhile, recognise the need for stronger protections but warn that poorly calibrated rules can cause new harms. Opaque moderation removes legitimate discourse; overbroad definitions sweep in protected speech; and biased algorithms can entrench unfair outcomes for minority communities. Journalists, political actors and vulnerable groups all remain concerned about how enforcement might affect their rights to speak and be heard.
Legal and technical frictions
Legal scholars point to the likely role of litigation in shaping the Online Safety Act’s boundaries. Broad statutory definitions invite court challenges over the Act’s interaction with free-expression and data-rights frameworks. The judiciary will inevitably interpret competing aims and limit Ofcom’s discretion, affecting how ambitious the regulator can be in practice.
Technologists stress another tension: policy timelines rarely match engineering realities. Building reliable classification systems, appeals processes and remediation pathways demands iterative development, longitudinal testing and interdisciplinary teams — not a one-off compliance checklist. There is no off-the-shelf technical fix for value-laden moderation questions; designing systems that respect context, intent and proportionality takes sustained investment.
Paths to improvement
Experts converge on a set of pragmatic reforms that could improve implementation without abandoning the Act’s protective aims:
– Clarify definitions and scope through iterative, evidence-based rulemaking. Instead of one-size-fits-all edicts, Ofcom should update codes as technical and social-science insights accumulate, making the rules more predictable and defensible.
– Prioritise transparency. Require platforms to publish provenance and performance data about moderation systems, takedown rates, appeals outcomes and error margins. Transparency would allow independent evaluators and civil society to test claims and surface systemic problems.
– Bolster Ofcom’s technical capacity and independent auditing. The regulator needs in-house expertise and access to third-party auditors so decisions rest on evidence rather than conjecture.
– Adopt staged or proportionate enforcement. Apply full obligations where greatest harms exist, while giving smaller services longer runways or scaled requirements. Clear benchmarks and phased timelines would reduce undue burdens on entrants and innovators.
Trade-offs and political pressures
Not everyone agrees on the right balance. Free-speech advocates are cautious about expanding state control over content; other campaigners press for quicker, tougher action to protect vulnerable users. Ofcom has defended its balancing act, noting statutory complexity and the wide range of stakeholder perspectives it must weigh while finalising codes and enforcement strategies.
The presence of legal challenges and parliamentary scrutiny is inevitable. As Ofcom publishes guidance and enforces the codes, precedent and litigation will further shape what is feasible and lawful. Policymakers face a central test: can the Online Safety Act be implemented in ways that reduce real harms without unduly curbing expression, stifling competition or redirecting scarce resources away from innovation?
Conclusion: the stakes of implementation
The Online Safety Act could set global norms for platform governance, influence investment in safety technologies and change how citizens experience online spaces. But the paradox remains: the public wants both safety and free expression, and those goals sometimes collide. Ofcom’s task is to craft rules that are legally defensible, evidence-led and accountable in practice. Achieving that balance will require clearer definitions, better data, greater institutional capacity and phased enforcement. Without these fixes, the promise of the Act risks being undermined by arbitrary enforcement, disproportionate burdens or outcomes that fall short of both safety and freedom.
