UK Online Safety Act enforcement begins with first notices issued to tech platforms

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, issued its first formal notices to social media platforms under the Online Safety Act on 15 October 2024, requiring companies to demonstrate compliance with new illegal content duties including measures to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material and protect children from grooming and sextortion. The notices mark the beginning of active enforcement of legislation that imposes substantial penalties—up to 10 percent of global turnover—for platforms that fail to identify, remove and prevent the distribution of CSAM or adequately assess risks to child users.

Real-time pattern detection at the point of contact addresses the statutory duty at its source. Guardii's anti-grooming, anti-sextortion and anti-CSAM modules operate within direct messaging environments across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, identifying escalation, coercion and the exchange of abusive imagery before a child is harmed, and surfacing high-risk conversations to the adults or authorities in a position to intervene. By flagging threat behaviour rather than scanning content at scale after it has been shared, the technology enables platforms and institutional safeguarding teams to meet their legal obligations without relying solely on retrospective takedown or user reporting.