Recently, the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, which has been in effect since July 25, 2025, has created criticism from tech businesses, free speech campaigners, and digital rights groups. The primary reason behind this is that they believe it goes too far and could have a significant impact on civil liberties.
The new provisions are designed to make the UK the “safest place” to be online and require fulfilling specific requirements on tech platforms. Companies should now offer safety measures for children to prevent exposure to harmful content using age-checking policies. But sceptics wonder if it may inadvertently undermine user privacy rights and freedom of speech.
What’s the UK’s Online Safety Act?
The OSA Act mainly targets websites that are likely to be accessed by children. As stated above, it needs to protect younger age groups, that is, minors, from content that is harmful such as self-harm, pornography, abusive content, and more. These rules will apply to any services that can be accessed from the UK and those based outside of the UK etc.
To abide by these provisions and ensure online safety in the country, platforms have begun implementing age verification measures to verify the age of users. It’s essential to take appropriate action to promote safety online and effective content moderation.
The harmful content is divided into three categories by the OSA:
- Primary priority: This includes pornography and materials that lead to self-harm, suicide, etc.
- Priority: This includes bullying, hateful content, or abusive content depicting violence or stunts.
- Non-designated: Content that may cause harm to children, mainly financial or say poor product quality.
Noncompliance with the provision may be considered a crime and result in a fine of up to $18 million or 10% of the company’s global sales.
How is the Law Enforcement Going?
Ofcom has already started investigating 34 pornography websites and has also issued warnings to several foreign platforms, including Kiwi Farms and Grab. Additionally, specific mainstream platforms, such as Bluesky, X, and Reddit, have developed an age-verification tool. Whereas Spotify now needs a face scan to access harmful content.
Moreover, users are already looking for other ways to stop the content restrictions. The use of VPN services in the UK is growing at the fastest pace. Proton VPN has seen a 1,800% increase in daily signups, and NordVPN has experienced a 1,000% rise in subscriptions.
Creating Free Speech and Privacy Concerns
Elon Musk’s X platform has commented on the UK’s Online Safety Act, stating that it may seriously infringe on free speech as the conflict between safety and harmful content intensifies.
They have further noted that while the law has “laudable intentions,” it has led to increased censorship, high compliance, and a burden. There are cases every month in which people are caught for saying anything online. Some critics claim that the UK’s Online Safety Act will limit familiar people from speaking online. Most people share their views on social media platforms, TV, and more, with in fact fear in mind. The point, according to the letter of the law and their actual sense of freedom of expression, is that people should enjoy the same rights to free speech online as they do offline.
The act’s age verification provisions are viewed as the first step toward censorship rather than a solution to a problem that the government is working to address. Elon Musk has referred to the law as a tool for “suppression of the people” and has requested platforms to raise censorship standards in particular situations to avoid fines. Around 470,000 people have signed a petition to abolish the law.
What’s the View of UK Government?
The UK Online Safety Act has been made strong by the UK government and Ofcom, who say that it has high safety for freedom of speech and imposes obligations to protect expression in addition to protecting minors.
Creating a safer internet for children is the need of the hour. The UK has now become one of the first democracies to incorporate the Online Safety Act. It stands as an inspiration for other countries to take action and prevent children from unexpected abuse. This could indeed be a global standard!
Level up your knowledge with daily dose of tech news right on our trusted website!
Also Read:
Best Cybersecurity Practices to Keep Your Data Safe beyond the Holidays