Online Safety Act Unable to Punish Social Media Firms Over UK Riot Posts

The UK is unable to sanction social media firms such as X over their role in inciting far-right riots despite the Online Safety Act becoming law over nine months ago.

Violent riots and protests have erupted across the UK including in Birmingham, Liverpool and Plymouth, prompting panic and severe police response.

Social media services have come under harsh criticism since the riots began, with sites like Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, said to have helped fuel and organise the demonstrations.

Musk has faced criticism for a reply to a post from Prime Minister Keir Starmer in which the billionaire claimed a UK “civil war is inevitable”.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said this week that social media platforms have put “rocket boosters” under content promoting far-right behaviour.

Cooper said on BBC Radio 5 Live on Monday that social media companies would need to “take some responsibility for this”.

However, new laws designed to punish social media sites for hosting harmful content are currently powerless to do so.

Despite the UK passing the Online Safety Act into law almost a year ago, Ofcom – the regulatory body responsible for enforcing the act – told UKTN it is unable to take action against social media firms for harmful posts inciting the ongoing riots.

A spokesperson for Ofcom said the powers from the act have not come into full force yet.

“We’re moving quickly to implement the act so we can enforce it as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.

“We expect the illegal harms duties to come into force from around the end of the year, the children’s safety duties from spring, and the additional duties on the largest services in 2026. If tech companies don’t comply when the time comes, we’ll have a broad range of enforcement powers at our disposal to ensure they’re held fully accountable for the safety of their users.”

Ofcom said it would have to consult on “codes of practice and guidance” before making specific sanctions against social media companies for hosting dangerous content.

The spokesperson added this “will not involve us making decisions about individual posts or accounts”.

Mark Jones, partner at Payne Hicks Beach, said the Online Safety Act “falls short of the government’s original intention of making the UK the safest place to be online”.

Jones added: “There is a new false communications offence in the act which outlaws the intentional sending of false information that could cause ‘non-trivial psychological’ or physical harm to users online but this is predominantly aimed at internet trolls and does not cover the events of the past week.

“Instead, the police are likely to have to rely on offences under the Public Order Act 1986, which is the main piece of legislation which penalises the use of violence and/or intimidation by individuals or groups. Whilst the home secretary may have said ‘if it’s a crime offline, it’s a crime online’, and whilst that may be correct, the Online Safety Act provides no additional support to the pre-existing criminal law covering incidents of incitement of violence.”

Professional body the British Computer Society called for fines to be handed to X from Ofcom.

“When misinformation leads to riots and unrest, there must be consequences. It is easy to argue that X has shown disregard for public safety in hosting such content,” said BCS fellow Adam Leon Smith.

“We urge Ofcom to enforce the Online Safety Act as soon as they can, with the full weight of the law and levy significant fines if they find mismanagement on the platform.”

UK riots prompt social media meeting

Rioters took to the streets after a fatal knife attack against a children’s dance class in Stockport at the end of July. The murderer was falsely described as a Muslim asylum seeker online. The ensuing violence and civil unrest has resulted in almost 400 arrests, dozens of police officers injured and widespread property damage.

Tech Secretary Peter Kyle met with social media leaders from TikTok, Meta, Google and X on Monday.

“I have been clear it is unacceptable that people are using social media to cause damage, distress and destruction in our communities,” Kyle said.

“Different companies take different approaches and I expect platforms to ensure that those seeking to spread hate online are not being facilitated and have nowhere to hide.”

Kyle said that where social media companies have acted, they have his “full backing and the support of teams across government”.

UKTN has contacted X for comment.