Ofcom launches investigation into Meta in the midst of High Court battle

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

8 October 2026

Ofcom, the media regulator and enforcer of the Orwellian Online Safety Act, has launched an online safety investigation into Meta in the same week that the parent company of Instagram and Facebook is bringing a High Court challenge against the "burdensome" requirements of the Act.

On Tuesday, the media watchdog announced that it was investigating Meta to establish whether the US firm had carried out sufficient due diligence and checks prior to launching a disappearing-messaging feature on Instagram.

This is the first investigation into Meta under the Online Safety Act, which was passed under Rishi Sunak's Conservative Government but implemented under Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Government, and which came into effect last year. It also comes at a time when major social media platforms are attempting to fight back against the scope of the legislation.

The challenge in the High Court is also the first to have been brought by Meta since the Online Safety Act came into existence.

The Online Safety Act was sold to legislators and the public as an important tool solely to protect children from online harms. In reality, it has mutated into something that has an ulterior motive: online censorship.

Since President Trump, who has an increasingly close relationship with Meta's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, returned to the White House, he and his administration have pulled no punches in their criticism of the UK and EU's penchant for legislating for greater online censorship. This is primarily seen in their criticism of the UK's Online Safety Act and the EU's Digital Services Act. Our American friends said that the Online Safety Act was infringing upon the First Amendment free speech rights of US citizens and unfairly targeting US companies.

Three of the biggest platforms — Meta, X, and TikTok — are all challenging Ofcom's intrusive information-gathering powers. The platforms argued that Ofcom's requests for data were both excessive and burdensome.

Ofcom's new investigation into Meta relates to Instagram Instants, a new feature (with a companion app) that allows users to share photos that disappear once they have been viewed.

George Lusty, Ofcom's Director of Enforcement, said: "Our online safety laws are clear – significant changes to platforms must be risk assessed before they're launched. This is a vital step that tech firms must take to protect their users. You wouldn't launch a new car without testing it properly, and it's the same for online services."

A spokesperson for Meta said: "Meta takes its regulatory obligations under the Online Safety Act seriously. We conducted a risk analysis and briefed Ofcom about this feature on a number of occasions before launching it."

Meta is also bringing a series of other legal challenges against the enforcement of the Online Safety Act, and is attempting to quash three information requests relating to Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp; it argued that Ofcom wanted to build a "bank of information", seeking 10,000 extra pieces of information.

Ofcom insisted that the information was required to regulate social media, and that it was carrying out the wishes of Parliament, as the industry "has been unregulated and unaccountable for more than 20 years".

On top of this legal challenge, Meta is challenging Ofcom's decision to place WhatsApp and Instagram in "Category 1", which subjects them to additional duties. A further challenge concerns the fines that Ofcom can impose on social media companies found in breach of the Online Safety Act. Under the law, such companies can be fined up to £18 million or 10 per cent of their qualifying worldwide revenue — whichever is greater. US officials recently hauled UK officials from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) into the US Embassy in London to argue that this was unfair, and that fines should instead be based on the relative size of the predominantly US firms' presence in the UK.

Yet again, the Online Safety Act has soured the UK–US special relationship.

Read more in The Telegraph.