The Government has published its draft statement of strategic priorities on online safety for Ofcom to consider as it begins to enforce the Online Safety Act starting next year
The Government has set out five online safety priorities for Ofcom
On 20 November 2024, Peter Kyle (Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology), set out the UK Government’s Statement of Strategic Priorities (SSP) for Ofcom in relation to online safety. The regulator will be required to consider the Statement as it carries out its continued implementation and enforcement of the Online Safety Act (OSA). The Government’s priorities are:
Safety by design, such as through the promotion and the development of age assurance technologies;
Transparency and accountability, engaging Ofcom’s transparency reporting powers and encouraging collaboration between the regulator and platforms;
Agile regulation, through continued monitoring of public awareness and use of new technologies (especially by children) as well as the pathways that lead users to harmful content;
Inclusivity and resilience, including in coordination with tech companies, civil society organisations and education providers to deliver interventions which help the public identify and protect against mis- and disinformation; and
Technology and innovation, such as by recommending new technical solutions to firms that could assist with compliance under the OSA.
After the SSP is laid before Parliament and designated, Ofcom will be expected to report back to the Government and the Secretary of State regularly on the action it has taken to fulfil these priorities to ensure that it is delivering safer spaces online. Ofcom is due to begin enforcing the first elements of the OSA from Q1 2025 and must undertake that work in line with the Government’s principles.
The protection of children is at the centre of each priority
The Government has said it would like to see Ofcom focus on developing the evidence-base around age-appropriate experiences to better equip itself to give companies recommendations on how to protect children of all ages. The SSP also explains that Ofcom is expected to continue researching new methods for keeping children safe online. The deployment of effective age assurance technologies is seen by the Government as a crucial step in protecting children from wrongfully accessing harmful content. Alongside the SSP’s focus on children’s safety online, the Government has also announced the launch of a new study exploring the effects of smartphone and social media use on children. The project follows a 2019 review by the UK’s Chief Medical Officer that found that the evidence base around links between smartphone or social media use and children’s mental health were insufficient to provide clear conclusions. Kyle said the Government was “firing the starting gun” in building the evidence-base needed to keep children safe online.
The Statement aims to tackle the spread of misinformation and disinformation
Another common theme of the SSP is the need to tackle the vast amounts of mis- and disinformation online, especially in the context of the disinformation-driven violence that occurred throughout July and August in the UK. Although the Government recognises the difficulties platforms face when countering mis- and disinformation due to the need to uphold legitimate debate and free speech online, it emphasises the importance of robustly countering mis- and disinformation to mitigate the unique threat it poses to the democratic processes and societal cohesion. The OSA has given Ofcom new transparency-reporting and information-gathering powers, which allow it to request information from platforms on how they are countering mis- and disinformation within the scope of the OSA. The OSA does not, however, grant Ofcom any way of holding platforms liable if mis- and disinformation are spread systematically on their services and instead limits enforcement related to disinformation to the criminal prosecution of individual users who spread false and harmful information.
An agile approach to regulation is expected to be important in regulating frontier technologies such as AI
Delivering an agile approach to regulation has been set as a priority due to the need to quickly regulate emerging harms that may arise from new technologies such as AI-generated content. Under the OSA, Ofcom plans to build on and iterate its codes of practice for regulated platforms over time to effectively regulate emerging harms. The regulator is planning to launch a consultation in Q2 2025 on some further specific measures that build upon its first codes on illegal content. The Government is concerned that the development of AI tools may encourage and allow for coordinated illegal and harmful behaviour online. The SSP also calls for continued collaboration between Ofcom and the Government in engaging with new AI risks and ensuring these are effectively addressed. The Government has recommended that Ofcom collaborate with other regulators around the world to align approaches across regulatory remits, which it has started through the Global Online Safety Regulators Network as its current chair. On 9 December 2024, the Network published its Three Year Strategic Plan for 2025-2027 which reiterates its position on the importance of information sharing to drive coherence across jurisdictions and warns again that online harms do not respect national borders.
