Five things industry can learn from Ofcom’s regulation of Video-Sharing Platforms

Ofcom’s VSP regime has served as a testbed for online safety regulation, offering valuable insights that have informed our approach under the Online Safety Act.

The message is clear: we expect openness, transparency, and early action from all regulated services. We encourage services to work with us openly and proactively. By collaborating with us constructively, services can prevent unnecessary escalation and play their role in creating a safer online experience for all UK users. 

• Compliance obligations apply to all regulated services regardless of what other services may or may not be doing. In other words, poor practices elsewhere are not a defence against complying with obligations.
  
  
• Responses to formal information requests must be accurate and timely. The VSP regime has demonstrated the importance of responding to formal requests for information on time and with complete and accurate information. Services failing to meet that standard will be held to account. We expect a high level of cooperation.
  
  
• Clear, open, and honest communication is key. We know that regulatory requirements can pose challenges and tension requiring services to navigate trade-offs and prioritising product changes, potentially delaying product launches. We expect supervised services to notify us about key developments. Transparent dialogue allows risks to be identified early, solutions to be found collaboratively, and trust to be maintained between services and Ofcom. Productive relationships enable services to showcase effective measures and contribute to shaping future policy. 
  
  
• Supervision and engagement is our preference, but we won’t hesitate to take enforcement action. Ofcom assessed VSPs measures and secured timely improvements through targeted oversight from supervisory engagement. This often resulted in positive change and proactive engagement ahead of significant platform changes. However, providers posing significant risk to users or an unwillingness to engage were quickly escalated to formal enforcement action. This approach will be replicated under OS.  
  
  
• Transparency can have tangible impact on services’ reputation – both positive and negative. VSP transparency and enforcement publications attracted mainstream media attention and resulted in public discourse on what services are or are not doing to protect their users. We’ll continue to shine a light on practices through our transparency powers and we expect services to watch and learn from others’ good and bad practices.