Fresh proposals to criminalise ‘nudification’ apps, prioritise cyberflashing and non-consensual intimate images, and even ban under-16s from social media have reignited debate over whether the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA 2023) is fit for purpose. Writing in NLJ this week, Alexander Brown, head of technology, media and telecommunications, and Alexandra Webster, managing associate, Simmons & Simmons, caution against reactive law-making that could undermine the Act’s ‘risk-based and outcomes-focused’ design
OSA 2023 already imposes duties on an estimated 100,000 services, backed by Ofcom codes and a growing enforcement drive—33 investigations across five programmes in the past year. While targeted reform may be justified to ‘plug true gaps’, the authors argue that most tech-enabled harms can be tackled through existing offences, applied flexibly.
The real challenge is pace. A regime built for adaptability must not be destabilised by politically driven fixes that sacrifice flexibility for speed.
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