Online Safety Act

Ofcom writes:

Since we opened our investigation into 4chan Community Support LLC ('4chan') and its compliance with its duties to protect users from illegal content, new duties to protect children under the Online Safety Act 2023 ('the Act') 203 the Protection of Children duties - have come into effect.

Such duties require providers of regulated user-to-user services, which are likely to accessed by children, to use proportionate systems and processes which are designed to effectively reduce the risk of harm to children from content available on their site and to prevent children from encountering certain types of harmful content 203 known as Primary Priority Content - altogether. In particular, section 12 of the Act requires providers of services that fall under Part 3 of the Act, and allow one or more kinds of Primary Priority Content (including pornographic content), to use highly effective age verification or age estimation (or both) to prevent children from encountering that kind of content where identified on the service.

Ofcom is therefore expanding this investigation to include consideration of whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that 4chan has failed, or is failing, to comply with its duties under section 12 of the Act.

Undress.cc is a nudification website from Itai Tech where users can submit a clothed image and receive the unclothed estimation. The website is currently self blocked to UK users.

It seems that this website maybe the first to be punished by Ofcom. Maybe the company was asking for trouble being an adult company that is stupidly registered in the UK. Ofcom writes:

Following an investigation, Ofcom has provisionally determined that there are reasonable grounds to believe Itai Tech Ltd has failed / is failing to comply with section 81 of the Online Safety Act (OSA). Section 81 imposes a duty on providers of services that fall under Part 5 of the OSA to ensure, through the use of highly effective age verification or age estimation (or both), that children are not normally able to encounter content that is regulated provider pornographic content.

Ofcom therefore issued a provisional notice of contravention to Itai Tech Ltd on 17 September 2025 under section 130 of the OSA. The notice also sets out our provisional view that Itai Tech Ltd has infringed its duties under section 102(8) of the OSA by failing to respond to a statutory request for information issued as part of the investigation.

The notice sets out the facts that Ofcom has relied upon to reach its provisional view, the actions we propose to take, and the rationale for those decisions. Itai Tech will now have a period of 20 working days to make representations to Ofcom, which will be carefully considered before reaching a final decision.

The government has announced urgent action to toughen the Online Safety Act by putting stricter legal requirements on tech companies to hunt down and remove material that encourages or assists serious self-harm, before it can destroy lives and tear families apart.

While platforms already have to take specific steps to protect children from this dangerous self-harm content, the government recognises that adults battling mental health challenges are equally at risk from exposure to material that could trigger a mental health crisis or worse.

The new regulations mean that content encouraging or assisting serious self-harm will be treated as a priority offence for all users.

The change will trigger the strongest possible legal protections, compelling platforms to use cutting-edge technology to actively seek out and eliminate this content before it can reach users and cause irreparable harm, rather than simply reacting after someone has already been exposed to it.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said:

This government is determined to keep people safe online. Vile content that promotes self-harm continues to be pushed on social media and can mean potentially heart-wrenching consequences for families across the country.

Our enhanced protections will make clear to social media companies that taking immediate steps to keep users safe from toxic material that could be the difference between life and death is not an option, but the law.

Julie Bentley, Chief Executive of Samaritans, said:

We welcome these efforts to make the Online Safety Act go further to protect both adults and children from dangerous self-harm content. While the internet can be a source of support for people who are struggling, damaging suicide and self-harm content can cost people their lives.

It's therefore vital that government continues to take opportunities to strengthen the Act and it's over to Ofcom now to use their powers to hold platforms to account so we can save more lives lost to suicide.

The regulations will come into force 21 days after they are made, following approval by both Houses of Parliament. We expect this Statutory Instrument (SI) to be laid in the autumn.

Ofcom has launched censorship investigations into the compliance of five companies -- which collectively run 22 pornography sites -- on grounds of lack of ID/age verification being implemented. Ofcom writes:

We have opened formal investigations into whether the following providers have highly effective age checks in place to protect children from encountering pornography across 22 websites: Cyberitic LLC, Web Prime Inc, Youngtek Solutions Ltd, ZD Media s.r.o and the provider of xgroovy. If we identify any further sites run by these companies, they will be added to our investigations.

These sites have been prioritised based on the risk of harm they pose and their user numbers, including where there have been significant increases in their user numbers since the 25 July deadline. Collectively, these sites have over 8 million unique monthly UK visitors.

We are also expanding the scope of our existing investigations into 8579 LLC and Itai Tech.

As well as investigating their compliance with the requirement to introduce age checks for pornographic content, we are now also investigating whether they have failed to respond adequately to statutory information requests from Ofcom.

 

The  Cyberitic LLC adult site is still available in the UK without ID/age verification:

• www.shesfreaky.com

The  Web Prime Inc adult sites are still available in the UK without ID/age verification:

• www.anysex.com
• www.fapality.com
• www.mylust.com
• www.xcafe.com
• www.yourlust.com

The Youngtek Solutions sites are set to introduce ID/Age verification:

• www.imagefap.com
• www.empflix.com
• www.moviefap.com,
• www.pornrepublic.com
• www.tnaflix.com

The  ZD Media adult sites are still available in the UK without ID/age verification:

• www.hello.porn
• www.homo.xxx
• www.max.porn
• www.ok.porn
• www.ok.xxx
• www.perfectgirls.xxx
• www.pin.porn
• www.pornhat.com
• www.pornhat.one
• www.pornstars.tube

XGroovy.com is still available in the UK without ID/age verification.

The 8579 LLC adult sites are still available in the UK without ID/age verification:

• 4kporn.xxx
• crazyporn.xxx
• love4porn.com
• hoes.tube.

Newspaper reports are suggesting that visits to the three main porn websites, all now inflicting ID verification, have significantly declined. The reports have only published a few partially defined example stats from an analytics company called SimilarWeb that don't readily stack up with themselves.

Papers report that

• the most popular, Pornhub dropped from an estimated 3.8m on July 24 to 2.0m for an average day in August, a drop of 47%. The Daily Mail adds that this figure has dropped to 1.8m by 18th August.
• the second most popular,  XVideos dropped by a similar 47%
• the third most popular, xHamster dropped from an estimated 2.0m on July 24 to 1.2m for an average day in August, a drop of 39%.

That would seem to be an average drop of about 45%.

There are now three straightforward options for porn viewers to continue their entertainment ie

• Stupidly submit to the ID verification
• Simply move to the many smaller websites that haven't implemented ID verification, see list of adult websites and their ID verification status
• Use a VPN to continue to browse any porn site of your choice.

So it would seem a fair assumption that no porn viewers need be deprived of their adult entertainment and that they would probably continue very much as before.

It would therefore be reasonable to assume that 55% of porn viewers have submitted to ID verification whilst 45% have moved to non restricted websites or are using a VPN.

Surely Ofcom, the Government and the parasitic age verification companies will all be well pleased that so many people have opted for ID verification.

The SimilarWeb analytics do indeed suggest that there has been a significant upsurge for the non ID verifying smaller websites. The Daily Mail comments that the traffic to non-complying PornHat.com increased by 130% in the same time frame. Pornhub commented:

As we've seen in many jurisdictions around the world, there is often a drop in traffic for compliant sites and an increase in traffic for non-compliant sites.

The traffic stats also suggest that there has been no significant decline in visitors to X and Reddit that have introduced ID verification, but only for their adult sections. The majority of their websites are unrestricted  to all for the large majority of their content.

Reporter Ash Parrish writes on the Verge website:

In the aftermath of itch.io pulling the sale of over 20,000 pages of adult content , the creators of that work are left feeling betrayed, exhausted, and fearful. The number of platforms that permit the sale of adult material is shrinking, and theres no guarantee the ones that remain will still permit it in the future.

To some creators, the most disheartening thing about itch.io removing thousands of pages of adult content is that its relatively unsurprising. The storefront is one of several in recent years that have embraced adult content only to shun it later when payment processors start asking questions. They've now found themselves booted from platform to platform, moving from Tumblr to Patreon to Gumroad, only to have the rug pulled out from under them each time.

But now, with their livelihoods at stake, many creators and their communities have begun to push back and search for new ways to thrive.

PixelJail, a creator who makes BDSM and other kink-related comics and illustration, has now opted to set up their own websites. But even without the burden of conforming to a platforms rules, having ones own website isnt a guarantee of absolute safety. In the UK, where PixelJail lives, the recently implemented Online Safety Act requires that online platforms have strong age checks in place to prevent children from accessing pornographic or harmful content.

When adult creators are regularly forced to find new places for their work, their business overall suffers. I can never get ahead, said PixelJail, a creator who makes BDSM and other kink-related comics and illustrations. I have to stop doing paid work to set up new accounts, backlog posting, pay for new subscriptions or services and other administrative tasks. I had to geoblock my websites in the UK, including my webstore, PixelJail said, meaning they no longer sell their work in their own country

See the full article from theverge.com

In an ideal world inhabited by politicians and children's campaigners, social media companies would work though all postings and treat each on its merits as to whether it requires age gating or not.

In the real world where commercial reality make this approach too expensive, coupled with a safety first approach mandated by ludicrously massive fines for transgression, the social media play safe and implement age gating around entire forums or even whole websites. For smaller companies it is often make sense just to self block the whole website to UK users.

Of course this reality leads to many more posts being blocked or age gated than maybe simple minded politicians envisaged. Now there seems to be a widespread disquiet about how the Online Safety Act is panning out.

Apart from just the 498,000 people that have signed the petition to repeal the Online Saety Act,  LibDems MP Victoria Collins and peer Lord Clement-Jones wrote a letter to the censorship minister Peter Kyle saying:

There remain significant concerns about how the legislation is currently being implemented, including concerns that:

• age-assurance measures may prove ineffective, as children and young people may use VPNs to sidestep the systems,

• political content is being age-gated on social media

• educational sites like Wikipedia will be designated as Category 1 services, requiring them to age verify moderators

• important forums dealing with LGBTQ+ rights, sexual health or other potentially sensitive topics have been age gated, and that

• age assurance systems may pose a data protection or privacy threat to users.

The implementation of the Act must be flexible, and respond to those emerging concerns. The intention behind this legislation was never to limit access to political or educational content, or to important support relied on by young people.

It was intended to keep children safe, and we must ensure that it is implemented in a way that does that as effectively as possible.

They then go on to talk about how parliament needs the chance to review it and make legislative changes where necessary.
 

Ofcom on over blocking

Online security expert Alec Muffet has tweeted that he has spotted a few hints that Ofcom has recognised that over blocking will be an inevitable characteristic of  Soi cla media's attempts to live whith the censorship rules:

Ofcom *may* be starting to understand that platforms are free to label entire forums as 18+ but that this conflicts with the OSA leading to overblocking pic.twitter.com/znbcfHhg4B

— Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) August 5, 2025

 

Of course MPs use VPNs themselves, its basic internet security

See article from reclaimthenet.org

Meanwhile it is interesting to see that when Peter Kyle has called for people not to use VPNs for the sake of the children, then it is intereting to see that MPs themselves are using VPNs as a matter of course. After all it would be stupid not to, for people in public life.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Peter Kyle warned:

For everybody out there whos thinking about using VPNs, let me say this to you directly: verifying your age keeps a child safe. Keeps children safe in our country, so lets just not try to find a way around.

Politico reported that official spending records show parliamentarians across party lines have been billing the public for commercial VPN services. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds charged taxpayers for a two-year NordVPN subscription in April 2024. Labour MP Sarah Champion, who in 2022 pressed the government to investigate whether teenage VPN use could undermine online safety rules, also has a subscription on record.

The government says it has no intention of outlawing VPNs but admits it is monitoring how young people use them. This comes after a sharp increase in downloads following the rollout of mandatory digital ID checks under the new censorship law, the Online Safety Act.

So I wonder how many porn using MPs prefer to dangerously hand over their ID data for age verification, and how many play it safe and use a VPN.

Young people should be able to access information, speak to each other and to the world, play games, and express themselves online without the government making decisions about what speech is permissible. But in one of the latest misguided attempts to protect children online, internet users of all ages in the UK are being forced to prove their age before they can access millions of websites under the countrys Online Safety Act (OSA).

The legislation attempts to make the UK the 'the safest place' in the world to be online by placing a duty of care on online platforms to protect their users from harmful content. It mandates that any site accessible in the UK--including social media , search engines , music sites , and adult content providers --enforce age checks to prevent children from seeing harmful content . This is defined in three categories, and failure to comply could result in fines of up to 10% of global revenue or courts blocking services:

• Primary priority content that is harmful to children:

  • Pornographic content.

  • Content which encourages, promotes or provides instructions for:

    • suicide;

    • self-harm; or

    • an eating disorder or behaviours associated with an eating disorder.

• Priority content that is harmful to children:

  • Content that is abusive on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or gender reassignment;

  • Content that incites hatred against people on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or gender reassignment;

  • Content that encourages, promotes or provides instructions for serious violence against a person;

  • Bullying content;

  • Content which depicts serious violence against or graphicly depicts serious injury to a person or animal (whether real or fictional);

  • Content that encourages, promotes or provides instructions for stunts and challenges that are highly likely to result in serious injury; and

  • Content that encourages the self-administration of harmful substances.

• Non-designated content that is harmful to children (NDC):

  • Content is NDC if it presents a material risk of significant harm to an appreciable number of children in the UK, provided that the risk of harm does not flow from any of the following:

    • the contents potential financial impact;

    • the safety or quality of goods featured in the content; or

    • the way in which a service featured in the content may be performed.

Online service providers must make a judgement about whether the content they host is harmful to children, and if so, address the risk by implementing a number of measures, which includes, but is not limited to:

• Robust age checks: Services must use 'highly effective age assurance to protect children from this content. If services have minimum age requirements and are not using highly effective age assurance to prevent children under that age using the service, they should assume that younger children are on their service and take appropriate steps to protect them from harm.'

  To do this, all users on sites that host this content must verify their age, for example by uploading a form of ID like a passport, taking a face selfie or video to facilitate age assurance through third-party services, or giving permission for the age-check service to access information from your bank about whether you are over 18.

• Safer algorithms: Services 'will be expected to configure their algorithms to ensure children are not presented with the most harmful content and take appropriate action to protect them from other harmful content.'

• Effective moderation: All services 'must have content moderation systems in place to take swift action against content harmful to children when they become aware of it.'

Since these measures took effect in late July, social media platforms Reddit , Bluesky , Discord , and X all introduced age checks to block children from seeing harmful content on their sites. Porn websites like Pornhub and YouPorn implemented age assurance checks on their sites, now asking users to either upload government-issued ID, provide an email address for technology to analyze other online services where it has been used, or submit their information to a third-party vendor for age verification. Sites like Spotify are also requiring users to submit face scans to third-party digital identity company Yoti to access content labelled 18+. Ofcom, which oversees implementation of the OSA, went further by sending letters to try to enforce the UK legislation on U.S.-based companies such as the right-wing platform Gab .

The UK Must Do Better

The UK is not alone in pursuing such a misguided approach to protect children online: the U.S. Supreme Court recently paved the way for states to require websites to check the ages of users before allowing them access to graphic sexual materials; courts in France last week ruled that porn websites can check users ages; the European Commission is pushing forward with plans to test its age-verification app; and Australias ban on youth under the age of 16 accessing social media is likely to be implemented in December.

But the UKs scramble to find an effective age verification method shows us that there isn't one, and its high time for politicians to take that seriously. The Online Safety Act is a threat to the privacy of users, restricts free expression by arbitrating speech online, exposes users to algorithmic discrimination through face checks, and leaves millions of people without a personal device or form of ID excluded from accessing the internet.

And, to top it all off, UK internet users are sending a very clear message that they do not want anything to do with this censorship regime. Just days after age checks came into effect, VPN apps became the most downloaded on Apple's App Store in the UK, and a petition calling for the repeal of the Online Safety Act recently hit more than 400,000 signatures.

The internet must remain a place where all voices can be heard, free from discrimination or censorship by government agencies. If the UK really wants to achieve its goal of being the safest place in the world to go online, it must lead the way in introducing policies that actually protect all users--including children--rather than pushing the enforcement of legislation that harms the very people it was meant to protect.

Ofcom has launched censorship investigations into the compliance of four companies -- which collectively run 34 pornography sites -- on grounds of lack of ID/age verification being implemented. Ofcom writes:

We have opened formal investigations into whether the following providers have highly effective age checks in place across 34 websites: 8579 LLC, AVS Group Ltd, Kick Online Entertainment S.A. and Trendio Ltd.

These companies have been prioritised based on the risk of harm posed by the services they operate and their user numbers. Collectively, these websites have over 9 million unique monthly UK visitors.

These new cases add to Ofcom's 11 investigations already in progress into 4chan, an online suicide forum, seven file-sharing services, First Time Videos LLC and Itai Tech Ltd. We expect to make further enforcement announcements in the coming weeks and months.

We will now gather and analyse evidence to determine whether any contraventions have occurred. If our assessment indicates compliance failures, we will issue provisional notices of contravention to providers, who can then make representations on our findings, before we make our final decisions.

The 8579 LLC adult sites are:

• 4kporn.xxx
• crazyporn.xxx
• love4porn.com
• hoes.tube.

The websites are still available in the UK without ID/age verification

The AVS Group Ltd sites are:

• pornzog.com
• txxx.com, txxx.tube
• upornia.com
• hdzog.com, hdzog.tube
• thegay.com, thegay.tube
• ooxxx.com
• hotmovs.com
• hclips.com
• vjav.com
• pornl.com
• voyeurhit.com
• manysex.com
• tubepornclassic.com
• shemalez.com, shemalez.tube.

These sites now require ID/age verification in the UK but are available using a VPN.

The Kick Online Entertainment S.A site is

• motherless.com

The website is still available in the UK without ID/age verification

The Trendio Ltd sites are:

• theyarehuge.com
• tranny.one
• ah-me.com
• ashemale.one
• bdsm.one
• bemyhole.com
• gaygo.tv, gayxo.com
• shemale.pub,
• sunporno.com
• yesvids.com

These site now require ID/age verification in the UK via a hasslesome multi selfie approach from agerify. However the sites are still available using a VPN.

A dating safety app that allows women to do background checks on men and anonymously share red flag behaviour has been hacked, exposing thousands of members' images, posts and comments.

Tea Dating Advice, a US-based women-only app with 1.6 million users, said there had been unauthorised access to 72,000 images submitted by women. Some included images of women holding photo identification for verification purposes, which Tea's own privacy policy promises are deleted immediately after authentication.

The company also admitted that an additional 59,000 images from the app showing posts, comments and direct messages from over two years ago were accessed.

So most of the major tube sites have decided to implement ID verification for UK viewers. But thankfully there are still plenty of options of websites that have not yet implemented ID verification requirements. Here is a useful list of porn sites to try to find those not inflicting ID verification: toppornsites.com .

For viewers stupidly subscribing to the risk of handing over ID to watch porn I noted that many websites were promising to not keep a copy of ID data provided for verification purposes and then immediately demanding an email address that will be kept for furture visits. Surely an email address is a key piece of identity data that should not be retained.

Surely a better idea is purchase a VPN and access porn as if in a different country from the UK. For the moment all the major porn sites stil allow access via VPN. Perhaps one day this will not be 5the case when ID verification is adopted worldwide. Also not that it is up to websites whether they allow access via VPN or not. Under threat of extreme punishment they could reasonably easily one day block access from VPNs. (as the likes of BBC and Netflix already do).

Another option is to install a tor browser (the onion ring I think). See torproject.org . This is a browser that looks bery much like Firefox but obtains page data via  complicated and encrypted routing that evades censorship and country specific blocking. It is not quite as 100% succesful as a VPN but can be used to watch porn on the main porn websites.

But of course the authorities will not be very pleased by these straightforward workarounds, and they have put in place a censorship rule to prevent adult websites from themselves promoting workarounds. According to Ofcom and the BBC, platforms must not host, share or permit content that encourages the use of VPNs to get around age checks and it will be illegal for them to do so.

An Aylo spokesperson, the parent company of Pornhub said parents are advised to block VPN usage just in case, and  told the BBC that the question of VPNs was an issue for governments, adding:

We certainly do not recommend that anyone uses technology to bypass the law.'

Aylo has publicly called for effective and enforceable age assurance solutions that protect minors online, while ensuring the safety and privacy of all users. The United Kingdom is the first country to present these same priorities demonstrably

Thankfully such censorship laws simply don't apply to websites out of Ofcom's remit so there will surely be plenty of sources of information available to workaround the dangers of ID verification for porn.

 

Update: VPNs galore

27th July 2025. From the Financial Times

The Financial Times has reported on the inevitably booming sales and downloads  of VPNs.

Proton VPN has leapfrogged ChatGPT to become the top free app in the UK, according to Apple. Proton VPN has experienced a 1800% increase in daily UK. sign-ups. NordVPN has seen 1000% increase in UK purchases.

A Proton spokesperson told Mashable:

This clearly shows that adults are concerned about the impact universal age verification laws will have on their privacy.

Ofcom has published a statement detailing how they will expect larger websites to report on how they have applied censorship rules to user content. Ofcom writes:

The decisions explained in this statement set out our final positions on our guidance on transparency reporting. Our final guidance explains when and how Ofcom will exercise its transparency powers. It is designed to provide stakeholders with information about how the transparency reporting process under the online safety regime will work in practice, including the factors Ofcom will consider when deciding what information providers must publish in their reports, how we will produce our own Ofcom transparency reports and how we will engage with stakeholders throughout the process.

The Online Safety Act makes platforms -- including social media, search, and pornography services -- legally responsible for keeping people, especially children, safe online. Certain duties in the Act apply to all regulated services, while a set of additional duties apply only to certain services. The duty to publish transparency reports only applies to providers of certain regulated services, specifically those that appear on a public register of categorised services prepared by Ofcom.

Categorised services will have to publish transparency reports according to requirements that are set out by Ofcom in transparency notices. Our draft guidance lays out our proposed approach to determining what information relevant services are required to publish in their reports, as well as information about how we will engage with services throughout the reporting process.

Ofcom is also required to produce its own transparency report that draws conclusions based on the substance of the reports produced by providers. Our draft guidance presents our proposed approach to using information from service providers transparency reports in our own report.

Ofcom has commenced investigations into two pornographic services - Itai Tech Ltd and Score Internet Group LLC - under our age assurance enforcement programme.

Under the Online Safety Act, online services must ensure children cannot access pornographic content on their sites. In January, we wrote to online services that display or publish their own pornographic content to explain that the requirements for them to have highly effective age checks in place to protect children had come into force. We requested details of services' plans for complying, along with an implementation timeline and a named point of contact.

Encouragingly, many services confirmed that they are implementing, or have plans to implement, age assurance on around 1,300 sites. A small number of services chose to block UK users from accessing their sites, rather than putting age checks in place.

Certain services failed to respond to our request and have not taken any steps to implement highly effective age assurance to protect children from pornography.

We are today opening investigations into Itai Tech Ltd - a service which runs the nudification site Undress.cc - and Score Internet Group LLC, which runs the site Scoreland.com. Both sites appear to have no highly effective age assurance in place and are potentially in breach of the Online Safety Act and their duties to protect children from pornography. Next steps

We will provide an update on both investigations on our website in due course, along with details of any further investigations launched under this enforcement programme

 

Update: Low Scores

2nd July 2025. See article from ofcom.org.uk

Ofcom has closed its investigation of scoreland.com after the website introduced age/ID verification. The website now requires that UK users subscribe using a credit card (no debit cards) before content can be viewed. Visitors from other countries can see teaser images and can pay via several other options.

Ofcom writes:

In response to our investigation, Score Internet Group LLC have taken steps to implement highly effective age assurance to ensure compliance with their duties under Part 5 of the OSA.

As such, Ofcom is satisfied that the conduct that led to the opening of the investigation has ceased and we do not consider it appropriate to continue our investigation. We have therefore closed it without making any findings as to Score Internet's compliance with its duties, either currently or prior to its confirmation that it had taken steps to comply with the OSA.

Ofcom writes:

Today we are publishing our first major policy Statement for the Online Safety regime.

This decision on the Illegal Harms Codes and guidance marks a major milestone, with online providers now being legally required to protect their users from illegal harm.

Ofcom published proposals about the steps providers should take to address illegal harms on their services shortly after passage of the Online Safety Act in October 2023. Since then, we have been consulting carefully and widely, listening to industry, charities and campaigners, parents and children, as well as expert bodies and law enforcement agencies. With today's publication1, online providers must take action to start to comply with these new rules. The result will be a safer life online for people in the UK, especially children.

Providers now have a duty to assess the risk of illegal harms on their services, with a deadline of 16 March 2025. Subject to the Codes completing the Parliamentary process, from 17 March 2025, providers will need to take the safety measures set out in the Codes or use other effective measures to protect users from illegal content and activity. We are ready to take enforcement action if providers do not act promptly to address the risks on their services.

Analysis to follow but there are over 1000 pages to get through first!

The Online Safety Bill received Royal Assenton 26th October 2023, heralding a new era of internet censorship.

The new UK internet Ofcom was quick off the mark to outline its timetable for implementing the new censorship regime.

Ofcom has set out our plans for putting online safety laws into practice, and what we expect from tech firms, now that the Online Safety Act has passed. Ofcom writes:

The Act makes companies that operate a wide range of online services legally responsible for keeping people, especially children, safe online. These companies have new duties to protect UK users by assessing risks of harm, and taking steps to address them. All in-scope services with a significant number of UK users, or targeting the UK market, are covered by the new rules, regardless of where they are based.

While the onus is on companies to decide what safety measures they need given the risks they face, we expect implementation of the Act to ensure people in the UK are safer online by delivering four outcomes:

• stronger safety governance in online firms;

• online services designed and operated with safety in mind;

• choice for users so they can have meaningful control over their online experiences; and

• transparency regarding the safety measures services use, and the action Ofcom is taking to improve them, in order to build trust .

We are moving quickly to implement the new rules

Ofcom will give guidance and set out codes of practice on how in-scope companies can comply with their duties, in three phases, as set out in the Act.

Phase one: illegal harms duties

We will publish draft codes and guidance on these duties on 9 November 2023, including:

• analysis of the causes and impacts of online harm, to support services in carrying out their risk assessments;

• draft guidance on a recommended process for assessing risk;

• draft codes of practice, setting out what services can do to mitigate the risk of harm; and

• draft guidelines on Ofcom's approach to enforcement.

We will consult on these documents, and plan to publish a statement on our final decisions in Autumn 2024. The codes of practices will then be submitted to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, and subject to their approval, laid before Parliament.

Phase two: child safety, pornography and the protection of women and girls

Child protection duties will be set out in two parts. First, online pornography services and other interested stakeholders will be able to read and respond to our draft guidance on age assurance from December 2023. This will be relevant to all services in scope of Part 5 of the Online Safety Act.

Secondly, regulated services and other interested stakeholders will be able to read and respond to draft codes of practice relating to protection of children, in Spring 2024.

Alongside this, we expect to consult on:

• analysis of the causes and impacts of online harm to children; and

• draft risk assessment guidance focusing on children's harms.

We expect to publish draft guidance on protecting women and girls by Spring 2025, when we will have finalised our codes of practice on protection of children.

Phase three: transparency, user empowerment, and other duties on categorised services

A small proportion of regulated services will be designated Category 1, 2A or 2B services if they meet certain thresholds set out in secondary legislation to be made by Government. Our final stage of implementation focuses on additional requirements that fall only on these categorised services. Those requirements include duties to:

• produce transparency reports;

• provide user empowerment tools;

• operate in line with terms of service;

• protect certain types of journalistic content; and

• prevent fraudulent advertising.

We now plan to issue a call for evidence regarding our approach to these duties in early 2024 and a consultation on draft transparency guidance in mid 2024.

Ofcom must produce a register of categorised services. We will advise Government on the thresholds for these categories in early 2024, and Government will then make secondary legislation on categorisation, which we currently expect to happen by summer 2024. Assuming this is achieved, we will:

• publish the register of categorised services by the end of 2024;

• publish draft proposals regarding the additional duties on these services in early 2025; and

• issue transparency notices in mid 2025.