Ofcom

Online Safety Act probes of X/Grok, TikTok and Pornhub owner Aylo have moved Ofcom’s coverage toward direct enforcement of platform safety and age-assurance rules.

Who they are

Ofcom is the UK communications regulator as portrayed in coverage spanning telecoms, cloud-market referrals and, increasingly, oversight of large online platforms. Its role has broadened from decisions such as approving EE’s early 4G rollout and referring public-cloud concerns to the CMA to administering duties under the Online Safety Act (OSA).

The recent arc

The recent run crested in 2026Q2, following an already elevated 2026Q1, as the OSA became the dominant frame for coverage. January brought an investigation into X over sexualized deepfakes generated by Grok, with potential fines or a ban; July paired a TikTok compliance probe with Ofcom’s evidence that daily UK VPN use had risen after pornography age-limit rules took effect.

The tension

Coverage centers on whether Ofcom can make platform-safety and child-protection obligations enforceable in practice without creating disproportionate compliance demands or encouraging avoidance. Age inference at TikTok, VPN use to bypass pornography checks, and the challenges brought by Meta, Roblox and Quora to their OSA classifications all expose that tension; Meta, TikTok and X have also challenged the breadth of information Ofcom seeks under the Act.

Why it matters

If this trajectory continues, Ofcom will become a central test case for how a national regulator translates broad online-safety mandates into operational duties for global platforms. The outcomes of its investigations and classification disputes will help determine both the credibility of UK age-assurance and illegal-content rules and the limits of regulatory data demands, though the corpus also shows that workarounds and litigation could constrain their effect.

Related: the Online Safety Act · TikTok · Meta · OSA · Ofcom opens an investigation under the OSA into Grok over the sexualiz