The ruling supports the regulator’s ability to demand online-safety evidence, with the court finding insufficient detail behind the platforms’ arguments about the burden of compliance.
Britain’s High Court has upheld online-safety information notices challenged by Meta and WhatsApp, X and TikTok, giving Ofcom a significant victory over the evidence it can require from major platforms. The judgment, handed down on 30 October, addresses the operation of the Online Safety Act’s information-gathering powers.
The court’s official summary identifies the case as the first judicial review testing those powers. Its immediate importance is evidential: oversight depends on a regulator being able to examine how services operate, alongside the duties imposed on the services themselves.
Information beyond a removal total
The notices, issued in February after months of engagement, sought information about user activity, moderation decisions and users’ exposure to content. They also covered appeals and user reports, with age-related breakdowns relevant to assessing children’s experiences. These measures examine several stages of a platform’s response to harm.
Counting removals alone cannot show how many people encountered a post before action was taken. Appeals can reveal a different part of the system: whether users can challenge decisions and how quickly those challenges are resolved. Read together, the requested categories offer a broader view than a single enforcement total.
Burden arguments needed a clearer baseline
In the full judgment, Lord Justice Singh and Mrs Justice Collins Rice rejected the challenges to the notices. They allowed the proportionality issues to proceed for substantive consideration but found the evidence insufficient to show that the requirements imposed a disproportionate burden.
The judges examined whether the claimed extra work had been explained against the companies’ existing business and regulatory obligations. General references to large workloads did not adequately identify the additional resource impact attributable to the individual notices. That comparison mattered more than the absolute scale of the platforms’ operations.
The judgment also distinguished information gathered for Ofcom’s regulatory use from the Act’s separate transparency-reporting regime. The existence of the latter did not prevent the regulator using its information powers for the former. That reading preserves a route for obtaining evidence without treating public reporting and regulatory investigation as interchangeable.
A wider enforcement programme continues
Separately, Ofcom opened an investigation on 6 October into whether Meta adequately assessed illegal-content and children’s risks before launching Instagram Instants. The regulator says significant service changes require updated assessments. Opening that investigation does not establish a breach, and the information-notice judgment does not decide its outcome.
For platforms, the practical lesson from the court case is that an objection about compliance costs needs a documented comparison: what systems already exist, what the notice adds and how the added work has been measured. That is an inference from the court’s treatment of the evidence, rather than a new technical standard announced by the judges.
For users, the ruling supports the collection of evidence about exposure and redress as well as removals. Whether that evidence leads to better outcomes will depend on the regulator’s subsequent analysis and enforcement. The court has upheld the tool; the effects of using it remain a separate test.
Sources
National Archives: Full judgment, [2026] EWHC 2779 (Admin); Courts and Tribunals Judiciary: Official press summary; Ofcom: Separate Instagram Instants risk-assessment investigation.
