The UK Online Safety Act requires platforms to detect and remove illegal content, protect children from harmful material, implement age verification, and maintain transparent content moderation practices. Non-compliance results in fines up to £18 million or 10% of global revenue, criminal sanctions for senior managers, and business disruption orders.

SafetyKit provides AI-powered infrastructure that enables platforms to achieve OSA compliance in under a week. Already deployed by leading global marketplaces and social platforms, our customers maintain regulatory compliance across UK, EU, and US frameworks while processing millions of daily content moderation decisions.

What the Act Requires

The Online Safety Act applies to platforms hosting user-generated content or facilitating user interaction, including social media, messaging apps, video-sharing sites, marketplaces, dating platforms, and forums.

Platform obligations:

1. Illegal Content Detection: Identify and remove priority offenses including CSAM, intimate image abuse, fraud, terrorism, harassment, and suicide promotion. Implement perceptual hashing and integrate with industry databases (NCMEC, IWF).
2. Child Safety Protections: Filter age-inappropriate content including pornography, eating disorder content, bullying, and self-harm promotion away from users under 18.
3. Highly Effective Age Assurance (HEAA): Verify user ages through government ID, credit card checks, facial estimation, or third-party digital identity services.
4. Algorithm Risk Assessments: Document how recommendation systems expose users to illegal content or children to harmful content. Generate quantitative data for Ofcom audits.
5. Transparency Documentation: Log every detection and enforcement action with timestamps. Publish transparency reports and maintain audit trails.

Failure to comply results in fines up to £18 million or 10% of global revenue (whichever is greater), criminal sanctions for senior managers, and business disruption orders requiring UK ISPs to block platform access.

How SafetyKit Enables Compliance

SafetyKit's AI risk and safety platform helps enterprises meet core OSA content moderation requirements without rebuilding trust and safety infrastructure. With over 200 ready-to-implement policies, platforms can start moderating content immediately across 193+ languages.

Automated Content Detection – Identify all OSA priority offenses across images, video, and text in real time, including CSAM, NCII, AI-generated deepfakes, fraud, violent extremism, harassment, and self-harm content. Support for 193+ languages ensures no content is missed.

Child Safety Filtering – Filter age-inappropriate content away from children while maintaining full platform access for adults.

Re-Upload Prevention – Detect previously identified NCII and CSAM at upload, even when modified through cropping, resizing, or color adjustment. Integration with industry databases and custom policy enforcement.

Algorithm Risk Analytics – Track content distribution patterns, recommendation outputs, and user exposure to harmful content by age cohort. Complete algorithm risk assessments with the quantitative data Ofcom requires.

Ofcom-Ready Audit Trails – Automatically log every detection, review decision, and enforcement action. Generate transparency reports and respond to information requests in days.

Regulatory Adaptation – Adapt to new priority offenses and transparency requirements with minimal engineering lift. Stay compliant as regulations evolve.

Take Action Now

Ofcom is actively enforcing OSA requirements with substantial penalties. Organizations that proactively address compliance gain competitive advantages: reduced regulatory risk, stronger user trust, and operational readiness for future regulations.

SafetyKit enables OSA compliance in under a week. Contact us to discuss your compliance strategy and see how our AI-powered platform protects users while meeting Ofcom requirements.

The Online Safety Act represents a new era in platform accountability. Platforms that take decisive action now will be better positioned to protect users, maintain compliance, and navigate the evolving regulatory landscape.