UK Online Safety Act: Ofcom Issues First Enforcement Notices to Three Social Media Platforms

The UK communications regulator Ofcom issued formal enforcement notices to three unnamed Category 1 social media platforms on 5 October 2026, the first action under the Online Safety Act 2023, citing failure to implement adequate systems to prevent children from encountering child sexual abuse material and to detect grooming behaviour in private messaging. The notices require each platform to submit remediation plans within 28 days and carry potential fines of up to 10% of global annual revenue for non-compliance.

Ofcom's enforcement premise is that platforms must deploy systems capable of detecting harmful contact patterns in private channels. Guardii's anti-grooming and anti-CSAM detection modules operate precisely in that space, identifying sustained targeting, escalation and coercive exchanges across direct messages on Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox without requiring human review of message content. Rather than retrospective content moderation, Guardii blocks hostile contact before it reaches the child and flags the conversation shape for intervention, aligning with the regulatory expectation that harm prevention occurs at the point of contact.