Online Safety Act: Ofcom consults on a range of 'new duties' to be imposed on higher-risk platforms and services

As many regular readers will appreciate, under the Online Safety Act, all in-scope tech firms are required to put in place appropriate safety measures to protect users from online harms. 

However, additional requirements apply to online services that fall into one of the three main categories, known as Categories 1, 2A and 2B. Category 1 services (including social media platforms, like Facebook) will have the most extensive list of additional duties, but Category 2A and 2B services (including search services and popular user-to-user messaging services) will also have to live up to some new additional duties, too.

Ofcom is now seeking evidence to inform its codes of practice and guidance on the additional duties that will apply to these “categorised” services.

The 'additional duties' include giving users more tools to control what content they see, ensuring protections for news publisher and journalistic content, preventing fraudulent advertising and producing transparency reports. Different duties apply, depending on which category a service falls into.

The Act requires Ofcom to produce codes of practice and guidance outlining the steps that companies can take to comply with these additional duties. It is calling for evidence from industry, expert groups and other organisations by 20 May 2024 to help inform and shape its approach. A formal consultation on the draft codes and guidance will follow in 2025.

Advice to the UK government on categorisation thresholds
In addition, Ofcom has published its advice on the thresholds which would determine whether or not a service falls into Category 1, 2A or 2B: 

Category 1 should apply to services which meet either of the following conditions:

• Condition 1 uses a content recommender system and has more than 34 million UK users on the user-to-user part of its service (representing around 50% of the UK population); or
• Condition 2 allows users to forward or reshare user-generated content, and uses a content recommender system, and has more than 7 million UK users on the user-to-user part of its service (representing around 10% of the UK population).

Category 2A should apply to services which meet both of the following criteria:

• is a search service, but not ‘vertical’ search service, and
• has more than 7 million UK users on the search engine part of its service (representing around 10% of the UK population).

Category 2B should apply to services which meet both of the following criteria:

• allows users to send direct messages, and 
• has more than 3 million UK users on the user-to-user part of the service (representing around 5% of the UK population).

Taking Ofcom's advice into consideration, the Secretary of State must set the threshold conditions in secondary legislation. Once passed, Ofcom will then gather information, as needed, from regulated services and produce a published register of categorised services.