Should the Online Safety Act be kept in place?
The Online Safety Act 2023 is in force: it requires online services to tackle illegal content and use highly effective age checks to keep children from pornography and other harmful material. Ofcom enforces it with fines of up to £18 million or 10% of global revenue, and has fined several adult sites since age checks began in July 2025. A petition for repeal passed 550,000 signatures and was debated in December 2025, but the Government said it had no plans to repeal and MPs largely backed reform instead. In October 2026 Ofcom was still rolling out new duties.
2 Opinions
All the act had done is inconvenience people, block parts of the internet off from the UK and expose us to data leaks. Plus there are so many ways to get around the age controls that children have come up with, so it's not even working despite the government overreach. What ever happened to parents being in charge of teaching children online safety and monitoring their use?
In its current form, no. It has every chance of being used as a tool to criminalise dissent and remove freedoms. Arresting a 74 yr old bloke from Smethwick for using the wrong pronouns isn’t keeping anyone safe at all.