As the UK’s regulator for online safety, Ofcom makes sure organisations that provide online services are carrying out their duties to comply with new rules, to help protect their users from harmful content.
Our research indicates that over 100,000 online services are likely to be in scope of the Online Safety Act – from the largest social media platforms to the smallest community forum. We know that new regulation can create uncertainty – particularly for small organisations that may be run on a part time or voluntary basis.
We’ve heard concerns from some smaller services that the new rules will be too burdensome for them. Some of them believe they don’t have the resources to dedicate to assessing risk on their platforms, and to making sure they have measures in place to help them comply with the rules. As a result, some smaller services feel they might need to shut down completely.
So, we wanted to reassure those smaller services that this is unlikely to be the case.
Proportionality is key
The Online Safety Act, and our approach to implementing it, are focused on tackling harm to people across the UK and doing so in a way that is risk-based and proportionate. If services are in scope of the act, they will need to take steps to comply with it, but the more onerous requirements will fall upon the largest services with the highest reach and/or those services that are particularly high risk.
Unfortunately, we also know that harm can exist on the smallest as well as the largest services. So, there are basic steps that all in-scope services need to take to assure themselves and their users that they understand the risks that exist on their service and, where necessary, the steps they will take to mitigate them.
If organisations have carried out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and determined, with good reason, that the risks they face are low, they will only be expected to have basic but important measures to remove illegal content when they become aware of it. These include:
- easy-to-find, understandable terms and conditions;
- a complaints tool that allows users to report illegal or harmful material when they see it, backed up by a process to deal with those complaints;
- the ability to review content and take it down quickly if they have reason to believe it is illegal; and
- a specific individual responsible for compliance, who we can contact if we need to.
Three steps for your online service
Here are the three key steps to helping you navigate the act:
Step 1: Am I in scope? You can use our scope checker to do a quick check on whether you are likely to be in scope of the Act or not: Check if the Online Safety Act applies to you - Ofcom.
Step 2: I am in scope. What do I need to do? Our online safety regulations guide, provides information on how to comply, particularly for smaller organisations. We have also launched a digital toolkit which provides a step-by-step interactive guide to what you need to do to comply with the Act.
Step 3: How do I keep up with what’s happening? We send out regular updates on everything you need to know. If you haven’t already done so, sign up to be added to our mailing list.