An assessment carried out by a service provider in respect of a category 1 service to determine, in summary, the user base of the service and the risk of users encountering “relevant content” through the service. See Section 14 of the OSA for the full criteria. “Relevant content” is content to which the user empowerment duties under Section 15(2) of the OSA apply.

Methods and processes to determine whether or not a particular user is a child. Examples provided by Ofcom include facial age estimation, photo ID matching, accessing bank records, and use of digital identity services.

See “Children’s access assessment”.

All category 1 services, category 2A services, and category 2B services.

Services to be designated by Ofcom that meet the thresholds for category 1 services. The thresholds have been drafted and are due to be passed by Parliament as secondary legislation. The draft thresholds encapsulate services that either: (1) use a recommender system and have more than 34 million UK users on the user-to-user service element; or (2) allow users to reshare user-generated content, use a content recommender system and have more than 7 million UK users on the user-to-user service element (representing c.50% of the UK population).

Services to be designated by Ofcom that meet the thresholds for category 2A services.  The thresholds have been drafted and are due to be passed by Parliament as secondary legislation. The draft thresholds encapsulate horizontal search services with more than 7 million UK users (representing c.10% of the UK population).

Services to be designated by Ofcom that meet the thresholds for category 2B services. The thresholds have been drafted and are due to be passed by Parliament as secondary legislation. The draft thresholds encapsulate services which allow users to send direct messages and which have more than 3 million UK users on the user-to-user service element (representing c.5% of the UK population).

An assessment carried out by a service provider to determine: (1) if it is possible for children to access the service; and (2) whether there are significant numbers of children using the service or if the service is likely to attract a significant number of children.

An assessment carried out by a service provider to determine: (i) the risk of children encountering online harms on the service; (ii) the potential impact on children of encountering these harms; and (iii) appropriate safety measures to be implemented to mitigate the risk of these harms.

Anything communicated by means of an internet service, whether publicly or privately, including written material and messages, oral communications, photographs, videos, visual images, music, and data of any description.

This definition comes from Section 236 of the OSA.

See “Children’s Risk Assessment”.

A voluntary forum established in 2020 that brings together four UK regulators with responsibilities for digital regulation: the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and Ofcom.

An EU regulation adopted in 2022 that addresses illegal content, transparent advertising and disinformation.

The Digital Services Act can be found here.

See “Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum”.

See "Horizontal search services”.

A general search engine that scans the entire web for results and displays them.

Content for which the use, possession, viewing, accessing, publication or dissemination constitutes a “relevant offence”. A “relevant offence” means a “priority offence” or an offence within Section 59(5) of the OSA. A “priority offence” means an offence specified in Schedule 5 (terrorism offences), Schedule 6 (offences related to child sexual exploitation and abuse) or Schedule 7 (other priority offences) of the OSA. See Section 59 of the OSA for the definition of illegal content in full.

An assessment carried out by a service provider to determine: (1) the risk of users encountering illegal content on the service; (2) the potential impact on users of encountering such content; and (3) appropriate safety measures to be implemented to mitigate the risk of these harms.

See “Regulated services”.

Content, which is not primary priority content or priority content, which presents a material risk of significant harm to an appreciable number of children in the UK. This definition comes from Section 60 of the OSA. Potential examples provided by Ofcom include “body image content” and “depressive content”.

The Office of Communications, the UK regulator for online safety.

The Online Safety Act 2023.

A copy of the Act can be found here.

See “Online Safety Act”.

All user-to-user services and search services.

Services that make available pornographic content that is published or displayed by or on behalf of the provider of the service, where the service has: (1) a significant number of UK users, or (2) the UK forms a target market for the service.

Content of such a nature that it is reasonable to assume that it was produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal, excluding content that is solely text-based. This definition comes from Section 236 of the OSA.

Content considered under the OSA to present the highest risk of harm to children, covering pornographic content and content relating to suicide, self harm, and eating disorders.

See Section 61 of the OSA for the full definition.

Content considered under the OSA to present a high risk of harm to children, covering abuse and hate content which targets religion, sex, race, sexual orientation, disability, or gender reassignment. “Priority content” also includes content which relates to or encourages bullying, violence, or harmful substances.

See Section 62 of the OSA for the full definition.

This term is yet to be defined for the purposes of the OSA. However, Ofcom has proposed that it will mean the total global revenue of a provider, across its entire group of companies, arising in connection with the provision of a regulated service during a defined qualifying period (likely to be annual).

See “Qualifying Worldwide Revenue”.

Content of such a nature that it is reasonable to assume that it was produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal, excluding content that is solely text-based.

This definition is set out in Section 236 of the OSA.

Online services to which the OSA applies. This includes user-to-user services, search services, and services that publish non-user-generated pornographic content. See Section 4 of the OSA for the full definition.

A service or functionality within a service that enables a person to search websites or databases. Such services can include both general search engines that scan the entire web for results and search services that help users to find specific products or services (e.g. flight comparison websites).

See Section 3 of the OSA for the full definition.

The Secretary of State for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology.

See “user-to-user services”.

User generated content.

An internet service that allows users to engage with each other’s posts or other content, including social media sites, video and messaging services (including chatrooms), forums, online marketplaces, and gaming and dating services.

See Section 3 of the OSA for the full definition.

A search service that helps users to find a specific product or service by searching a specific segment of online content (e.g. a flight comparison website).

Online platforms and search engines with over 45 million users in the EU, as defined in the Digital Services Act.

UK-established video-sharing platforms, governed by a statutory framework referred to as the VSP Framework or the VSP regime. The OSA sets out the process for repealing the VSP regime. See Schedule 17 and Schedule 3, Part 3 of the OSA for more information.

See “Video-sharing platforms”.