UK Online Safety Act

Statute United Kingdom · 2023

The Online Safety Act imposes duties of care on user-to-user and search services with links to the UK, enforced by Ofcom with fines to 10% of global turnover and, ultimately, business disruption measures. Its most consequential requirement in practice is highly effective age assurance, which has turned an editorial obligation into an identity-infrastructure problem — and Ofcom's enforcement has already reached generative-AI features rather than staying with content platforms.

Horizontal regime. It binds companies by what they do with data, software or customers, not by the sector they sit in. The industries below are where it creates specific, additional duties — not the limit of who has to comply.

Countries

Where this binds. Each links to the providers apis.io has catalogued there.

Regions

Industries

Each links to that industry as a scored cohort — so the question "how ready is this sector for the regime that governs it?" becomes one you can actually look at.