What is the UK Online Safety Act (OSA)?
Questions & Answer
The UK Online Safety Act (OSA), passed in 2023, is the United Kingdom’s flagship online safety law.
It creates duties of care for digital services to assess, prevent, and reduce the risk of harmful online content. Unlike the DSA, which harmonises obligations across the EU, the OSA is specific to the UK.
The OSA requires regulated services to:
Conduct risk assessments on illegal and harmful content.
Implement systems to prevent minors from accessing harmful material.
Provide tools for users to report harmful content and challenge decisions.
Meet transparency requirements by publishing reports for Ofcom, the UK’s regulator.
The law applies broadly to services hosting user-generated content, search engines, and messaging services with UK users.
Who watches the (automated) watchmen?
Spoiler: it's not more automation.Last week Meta laid off some more people I used to work with, spec...
7 mins
My CEO thinks the under-16 social media ban is right. I don't.
Like many of my colleagues in Trust & Safety, I've spent the weeks since the UK announced its un...
11 mins
Webinar: Moderating with Empathy at JustGiving
How JustGiving Balances AI and Human Judgement at Scale Join us on 8th July at 4pm BST for an excl...