Report from National Technology News
In Brief – The UK’s technology minister has expressed deep disappointment to communications regulator Ofcom about its updated roadmap for rules implementing the Online Safety Act (OSA) that extends the rollout of some platform duties until mid-2026, arguing that the change risks weakening protections for users, especially children and women and girls. The agency, which has already begun enforcing OSA provisions related to illegal content and child safety, especially on social media and pornography platforms, pushed back to next July its plans to publish a service-categorization register that will identify Category 1 platforms that must meet enhanced obligations, including user verification and transparency rules. The regulator attributes its delays to factors outside its control, notably a legal challenge by the Wikimedia Foundation that left open the possibility of further litigation if Wikipedia is designated as a top-tier service. Minister Liz Kendall urged Ofcom to speed up implementation of user-empowerment duties and welcomed Ofcom’s decision to restore its original timeline for terms-of-service obligations.
Context – While the UK is setting up digital regulatory regimes that largely parallel the EU’s, Prime Minister Starmer is trying to create the impression that the UK is more digital business friendly, including through regulatory processes that he has said will offer businesses “stability, pragmatism and the good sense they would expect from democratic British values.” The OSA, described by Ofcom as a “regulatory cousin” of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), gives the UK regulator the broad remit to “make online services safer” by requiring that “companies have effective systems in place to protect users” from a wide range of illegal and harmful content. The first big platform changes have been to require age verification by adult sites and large social media platforms. Wikipedia, a Very Large Online Platform under the DSA, describes regulatory compliance there to be a “major challenge” and preemptively sued in the UK to avoid various potential OSA mandates, such as prohibiting the platform’s longtime model of offering anonymity for contributors.