Using the UK Online Safety Act: report to Reddit first, then to Ofcom

The Online Safety Act 2023 puts legal duties on online services that have links to the UK, including services like Reddit that host content posted by users. The regulator that enforces it is Ofcom. Ofcom describes its job like this: “Ofcom’s job is to make sure online services, like sites and apps, meet their duties to protect their users.”

That wording matters, because it tells you what Ofcom is for. Ofcom is a systems regulator. It looks at whether a platform has sensible processes for assessing risk, taking down illegal material and handling reports and complaints. It is not a court and it is not a customer-service desk. On its complaint page Ofcom says plainly: “We cannot respond to or investigate individual complaints”. It adds: “While we can’t respond to your complaint, it will help us to assess whether regulated services are doing enough to protect their users – and if we should take any action.”

So the realistic goal of this route is twofold. First, use the platform's own reporting and complaints systems, which the Act requires to exist, to get the specific content looked at. Second, if those systems fail you, tell Ofcom, so that your experience becomes part of the evidence about whether Reddit is meeting its duties. Ofcom's own guidance puts the order the same way round: “reporting directly to the service should be your first step.”

Section 20 of the Act is headed “Duty about content reporting”. For user-to-user services it sets out “A duty to operate a service using systems and processes that allow users and affected persons to easily report content which they consider to be content of a kind specified below”. The kinds of content are illegal content for all services and, for services likely to be accessed by children, content harmful to children on any part of the service children can reach.

The same section makes clear that you do not have to be a Reddit user to report. An “affected person” is “a person, other than a user of the service in question, who is in the United Kingdom”, and who is the subject of the content, a member of a group the content targets, a parent or carer of a child involved, or an adult helping another adult use the service.

Section 21, headed “Duties about complaints procedures”, adds a second layer. A service must operate a complaints procedure that “provides for appropriate action to be taken by the provider of the service in response to complaints of a relevant kind” and that “is easy to access, easy to use (including by children) and transparent”. The relevant complaints include “complaints by users and affected persons about content present on a service which they consider to be illegal content”, and complaints that the provider is not complying with its illegal-content duty in section 10, its content-reporting duty in section 20, or its freedom-of-expression and privacy duties in section 22(2) or (3). In plain terms: if you report something and Reddit's handling of it seems to break these duties, you are entitled to complain about that too.

Notice what these sections do not say. They require a working process and “appropriate action”. They do not say that Reddit must remove everything reported, or must tell you the outcome in a set number of days. Whether content is illegal is also a legal judgement the service has to make, and it may disagree with you.

The text on legislation.gov.uk now also includes a section 20A on intimate images, inserted on 29 June 2026. It requires services to “allow users and affected persons to easily make an intimate image content report to the provider”, with a matching expedited complaints procedure in section 21(2A). Under section 20A(2), an intimate image content report is one that declares that the content is intimate image content, declares that the report is made by the subject of the content or by a person acting on that person’s behalf, declares that it is made in good faith and, to the best of the reporter’s knowledge and belief, true, gives enough information for the provider to identify the content, and gives contact details. So if your report is about intimate images shared without consent, say clearly that you are the person shown or are acting on their behalf, and give your contact details.

Reddit publishes a help article called “UK Online Safety Act: Information for UK users”. It says the Act “requires online platforms to provide a method for people to report content that is potentially illegal and/or restricted for minors in the UK” and gives UK-specific forms. It also says that for an ordinary breach of Reddit's own rules the quicker route is the normal report button: “If you wish to report a potential sitewide rule violation rather than submitting a UK illegal and/or restricted content report, we encourage you to use the report button next to the content you’d like to report (if you have a Reddit account)”. The article was marked as updated on 10 July 2025, so check it for newer forms.

Use the steps below in order. Each one builds the record that makes the next one useful.

A crime is a crime whether or not a platform acts. If you have been threatened, stalked, blackmailed or defrauded, report it to the police. In an emergency call 999; otherwise use 101 or your force's online reporting. Our police-report guide in this toolkit (/toolkit/police-report) explains what to bring and how Reddit hands over data to investigators.

Report Harmful Content, run by the UK charity SWGfL, is a separate national service. Its reporting page says that before you submit a report you must have reported the material to the platform directly “at least 48 hours ago”, and that it can only submit reports about eight named harms, including threats, impersonation, bullying and harassment, and unwanted sexual advances. Its page lists specific platforms; when this guide was checked, Reddit was not one of the named platforms (the list ended with Discord and “Other”), so confirm on its site whether it can take a Reddit report. It also states: “We are unable to take reports about terrorism related content” and “We are unable to take reports of sexual images of under 18s.”

For child sexual abuse imagery, do not wait for Reddit, and do not screenshot, download, save, copy or forward the images, even as evidence: record only the URL, username, subreddit and time. Ofcom's page on this says: “Call 999 if a child is in immediate danger.” You can report such images anonymously to the Internet Watch Foundation (iwf.org.uk), which says reporting is “quick, easy and anonymous”. Our NCMEC and IWF guide in this toolkit (/toolkit/ncmec-iwf) covers both services. Under-18s worried about a sexual image of themselves can use Report Remove from Childline and the IWF.

For intimate images shared or threatened without consent, adults in the UK can contact the Revenge Porn Helpline, which says it “supports all adult victims of intimate image abuse in the UK”. It also says it cannot “undertake criminal investigations or report to the police on the victim's behalf”, so you still need to tell the police if you want a crime investigated.

The Act was brought into force in phases. GOV.UK's explainer says Ofcom is “taking a phased approach to bringing duties into effect”. It records that the illegal-content duties were in effect and that “as of 17 March Ofcom can now enforce against the regime” (the explainer's timeline sits alongside dated 2025 steps but does not repeat the year in that sentence), and that the protection-of-children codes were laid in Parliament on 24 April 2025 with a deadline of 24 July 2025 for children's risk assessments.

Ofcom's roadmap page, last updated 28 July 2026, summarises where things now stand: “Online safety duties have been in force in the UK for just over a year (for illegal harms) and around nine months (for protection of children duties).” In other words, the reporting and complaints duties described above apply now. The same roadmap lists further steps still to come, including a consultation on additional duties for categorised services, and says it does not cover new duties arising from later legislation.

Section 169 lets certain organisations raise a wider problem with Ofcom. It says “An eligible entity may make a complaint to OFCOM that any feature of one or more regulated services, or any conduct of one or more providers of such services” presents a material risk of significant harm, among other tests. An eligible entity must be “a body representing the interests of users of regulated services, or members of the public, or a particular group of such users or members of the public”, and must meet criteria set out in regulations.

This is not something an individual can start. If your experience is part of a pattern, the useful step is to tell Ofcom through the ordinary complaint form and, if you are in touch with a charity or campaign group that works on the harm in question, tell them too. We have not confirmed which bodies currently qualify, so check Ofcom's and GOV.UK's pages for the current list.