Ofcom's First Online Safety Act Enforcement Wave
2025
Through 2025 the UK regulator Ofcom opened dozens of Online Safety Act investigations and issued its first fines, establishing an enforcement regime that age-gated platforms such as Reddit must comply with or face penalties up to 10% of global turnover.
What happened
Following the phased commencement of the UK's Online Safety Act 2023, the regulator Ofcom moved into active enforcement during 2025. By October 2025 it had launched multiple enforcement programmes and opened around 21 formal investigations, with reporting indicating investigations touching roughly 100 services as it tested compliance with illegal-content duties, child-protection rules, and age-check requirements.
Ofcom issued its first penalties in this period. Notable actions included a fine against the imageboard 4chan together with daily non-compliance penalties, a fine against a 'nudification' site for failing to use age checks to protect children from pornography, and, in December 2025, a £1 million fine against an age-verification provider over alleged failures.
The Act carries severe maximum penalties, fines of up to £18 million or 10% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher, giving Ofcom substantial leverage over global platforms. Reddit, which rolled out UK age verification in July 2025 to comply with the regime, operates within this enforcement environment, where failure to take adequate steps on illegal content or age assurance can trigger investigation and penalty.
The enforcement wave, paired with a half-million-signature repeal petition and widespread privacy criticism, made the UK a leading global laboratory for stringent platform regulation, with effects rippling across the services, including Reddit, that serve UK users.
Impact
Ofcom's enforcement actions turned the Online Safety Act from statute into active regulatory pressure, establishing the penalty regime and compliance expectations that shaped Reddit's UK age-verification rollout and its ongoing obligations.