Online Safety Act

Passed in 2023, the Act puts legal duties on services that host user content and on search engines. Ofcom enforces it. The illegal harms duties took effect in March 2025 and the child safety duties in July 2025, and the visible result on large platforms has been age checks, stricter default settings and firmer enforcement. For most creators those duties land on YouTube rather than on them. A UK creator who runs their own forum, community server or comments-enabled site can be a service provider in their own right, with risk assessments to do. The Act also created individual offences covering threatening and knowingly false communications, so it reaches the person posting as well as the platform hosting them.