The UK government expands the Online Safety Bill to compel social media services and search engines to restrict fraudulent ads, including “catfishing” scams
The Online Safety Bill began in May 2021 as a user-content regime, threatening fines up to 10% of revenue or £18M for failures on online abuse (fines of up to 10% of revenue), and was widened just weeks before this report to cover revenge porn, drug and weapons dealing, and people smuggling (outlawing revenge porn and weapons dealing). This expansion moves the bill's perimeter again: from what users post to what platforms are paid to carry.
The direction only intensified afterward — by mid-2023 the UK planned to force ad platforms themselves, including Google Ads, to stop scam ads and fake celebrity endorsements (forcing ad platforms like Google Ads to stop scam ads) — while the FT reported the accumulating duties had left companies struggling to implement rules the bill's own drafters found confusing (the bill becoming complex and confusing).
First-order effects
Social media services and search engines now bear a legal duty to restrict fraudulent advertising, including catfishing scams — pulling paid ads into the same enforcement net as user-generated content and exposing them to the bill's existing penalty framework.
Second-order effects
Platforms' ad-review operations become a compliance cost center rather than a revenue-quality function, and advertisers face tighter vetting at onboarding — pressure that the government later formalized by extending scam-ad duties directly to ad platforms like Google Ads.
Third-order effects
The pattern points toward platform liability defined by everything a service distributes — organic content, paid placements, and impersonation alike — with personal executive accountability and age-verification duties layered on top, making the UK's regime one of the broadest models of state-set content obligations.
The trend: Online safety regulation is expanding from moderating user posts to governing paid advertising and impersonation, turning ad marketplaces into regulated intermediaries.
The UK Online Safety Bill has quickly become an overstuffed collection of government ideas to regulate the internet. What started out as a potentially groundbreaking bill to regulate social media is now at risk of being a complicated, unenforceable mess https://www.ft.com/...
The Government has confirmed that ads appearing on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, and those on search engines, including Google, will now fall under the remit of the new Online Safety Bill https://twitter.com/...
Great news. @DCMS has agreed to include online adverts in the Online Safety Bill. Could not have been achieved without such a fantastic & determined campaign joining up consumer groups, campaigners, industry organisations, politicians, charities & media. https://www.moneysavingex…
It's great news that the government has acted on our calls to include scam ads as part of the Online Safety Bill. This is a major win in our fight to #StopOnlineScams Thank you @nadinedorries for listening to UK consumers and for protecting them online. https://twitter.com/... ht…
Organised crime use increasingly sophisticated methods online to trick even the most careful. The changes we're announcing to the #onlinesafetybill mean social media will have to take robust action to protect users from this high-harm crime. https://www.gov.uk/...
Scams don't just destroy people's finances - they have a devastating impact on people's mental health and self-esteem. We've heard the call so now we're ensuring scam adverts are covered by the Online Safety Bill. 👉 https://www.gov.uk/... https://twitter.com/...