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The House of Lords is about to put the latest child-protection plans of UK regulator the Office of Communications (Ofcom) under the microscope.
On Tuesday, the Lords Communications and Digital Committee will hear from three prominent online safety advocates as it probes the regulator's proposed new measures under the Online Safety Act (OSA). Andy Burrows of the Molly Rose Foundation, Rani Govender from the NSPCC, and Baroness Kidron OBE of 5Rights will be asked whether the changes will actually deliver more safety – or just more compliance burden, privacy nightmares, and unintended consequences.
Ofcom's amendments aim to beef up the OSA with a fresh set of obligations for platforms. This includes more aggressive age-assurance rules to determine when users are children, new restrictions on livestreaming that require platforms to disable comments, virtual gifts, and reactions when minors are involved, as well as blocking viewers from recording children's livestreams altogether.
The regulator also wants sites to deploy hash-matching to spot known illegal content – everything from CSAM to non-consensual intimate images – and roll out automated tools to flag grooming, fraud, self-harm, and suicide content.
The House of Lords says it will quiz the online safety campaigners about the likely effectiveness of Ofcom's proposed new protections and whether the proposed new protections around livestreams are adequate, or if children should be banned from livestreaming altogether.
Where it all went sideways
The Online Safety Act, pushed through in 2023 as the government's shiny new child-protection regime, promised to strong-arm platforms into compliance and scrub the internet into something safe enough for under-18s. But critics have been warning since day one that it hands ministers and Ofcom powers broad enough to steamroll free speech and snoop on users.
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Civil liberties groups argue "legal but harmful" content rules creep dangerously close to censorship, while large parts of the Act risk being unworkable or undermining encryption. Meanwhile, tech firms and privacy advocates warn that "highly effective" age assurance could mean collecting biometric data, verifying IDs, scanning or estimating ages from faces, or forcing people to share private information – any of which creates a loot-bag for abuse, hack, or mission creep by government agencies.
There has also been a backlash over enforcement mechanics. Some porn-site operators and smaller platforms say the cost and complexity of compliance are already driving them to block UK users or shut down entirely. VPN usage has surged as people try to sidestep geo-based blocks, age verification, or identity checks.
In Tuesday's hearing, the Lords will almost certainly press the witnesses on whether these new age assurance and livestreaming proposals will exacerbate those controversies.
The Register will be watching for whether the answers suggest that Ofcom's proposals will be a genuine advance, or yet another heavy-handed policy that promises safety but delivers expense and erosion of digital freedoms. ®
