UK Online Safety Act enforcement begins as Ofcom publishes illegal content guidance

The UK communications regulator Ofcom has published final guidance on how platforms must comply with illegal content duties under the Online Safety Act, including requirements to prevent children from encountering material such as child sexual abuse imagery and content facilitating self-harm or suicide. The codes and guidance, which take effect immediately for the largest services, set out proactive monitoring and removal obligations and establish a framework for proportionate risk assessment, with non-compliance attracting fines of up to ten percent of global revenue or criminal liability for senior executives.

Proportionate risk management depends on distinguishing between harmful contact that has already occurred and harm that can still be prevented. As a Meta Business Partner operating across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, Guardii delivers real-time detection of grooming, sextortion, CSAM and self-harm signals within private conversations, surfacing the risk profile of an exchange rather than its content so that a school safeguarding lead or parent can intervene at the moment a pattern of coercion or acute distress becomes apparent, meeting the Act's duty-of-care standard without requiring platforms to store or review the substance of every private message.