The Online Safety Act is back in the spotlight after a week of violence driven in part by far-right groups coordinating online, using a mixture of services including Telegram, TikTok and X.
“There need to be amendments to the Online Safety Act,” the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, told the Guardian on Thursday. “I think it’s not fit for purpose.”
But the act is a sprawling piece of legislation that runs to 286 pages and 241 sections. Amending it would be no easy feat, and even working out what is actually covered by the law today, almost a year since it was passed by parliament, is tricky.
Here we look at the main areas covered by the new laws, which are expected to come into force in the UK in 2025.