United Kingdom: Published Ofcom Online Safety Guidance on Judgement for Illegal Content

On 16 December 2024, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) published the Illegal Content Judgements Guidance (ICJG) under section 192 of the Online Safety Act. The guidance provides a framework for regulated services to determine whether user-generated content constitutes illegal content as defined by the Act. The Online Safety Act introduces priority offences, including terrorism, child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA), and hate-related crimes, along with provisions for other offences that may arise online. The ICJG details the offences that fall under the definition of illegal content, including both priority offences and relevant non-priority offences. Services are required to act if they have reasonable grounds to infer that content is illegal. This threshold is lower than that applied in criminal law, namely "beyond reasonable doubt". Consequently, services are permitted to base their judgments on reasonable inferences drawn from available information. Furthermore, the guidance delineates the distinction between content moderation for risk assessment and decisions pertaining to specific content. The Act does not require services to make judgments about illegal content if their own terms and conditions, which exceed the Act's definition of illegal content, are correctly implemented and guarantee compliance with the Act's obligations.