The Act creates a new
duty of care of online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal or legal but "harmful" content from their users. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher.
It also empowers
Ofcom to block access to particular websites. It obliges large
social media platforms not to remove, and to preserve access to, journalistic or "democratically important" content such as user comments on political parties and issues.
The bill that became the Act was criticised for its proposals to restrain the publication of "lawful but harmful" speech, effectively creating a new form of
censorship of otherwise legal speech.
[7][8][9]
As a result, in November 2022, measures that were intended to force big technology platforms to take down "legal but harmful" materials were removed from the bill. Instead, tech platforms are obliged to introduce systems that will allow the users to better filter out the "harmful" content they do not want to see.
[10][11]
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