Meta, TikTok and X Fight UK Watchdog’s Data Demands

The companies are contesting information demands issued by Ofcom as the regulator implements the Online Safety Act, according to Reuters. The 2023 law gives UK authorities broad powers to impose tougher requirements on digital platforms, particularly around protecting children from illegal and harmful material.

The dispute highlights mounting friction between technology companies and regulators seeking greater visibility into the way platforms moderate billions of posts, videos and other pieces of user-generated content.

Ofcom sent information notices to the companies in February seeking detailed metrics about their content-moderation operations, Reuters reported. The requests included figures covering material that had been removed or subjected to reduced visibility, as well as information about users’ exposure to harmful content.

Meta, TikTok and X argue that the demands impose excessive compliance burdens, according to Reuters. X said in evidence filed in the case that the Ofcom request was the most onerous it had received from a regulator anywhere in the world.

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Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram, said in court filings that Ofcom was seeking extensive, highly detailed information across seven of its services without sufficiently specifying the regulatory objective, Reuters reported.

TikTok separately argued that the regulator had sidestepped another monitoring framework that contained defined safeguards, according to the news agency.

Ofcom has rejected the companies’ objections, saying the information is necessary to determine whether Britain’s online-safety rules are having their intended effect. The regulator also said it reduced the scope of its requests before they took effect, Reuters reported.

The regulator said Parliament had given it responsibility for overseeing a technology industry that had gone largely without comparable accountability for more than two decades.

The legal fight comes as Ofcom gradually puts the Online Safety Act into force. Companies can face penalties reaching as much as 10% of worldwide turnover for the most serious violations of the regime, according to Reuters. That potential exposure gives the dispute significance beyond the immediate cost of gathering and supplying the requested data.

For the technology companies, the case could help establish limits on how much operational information regulators can demand as governments increase scrutiny of content-moderation systems. For Ofcom, access to granular platform data could be critical to determining whether companies are complying with rules that would otherwise be difficult to assess from outside their systems.

Source: Reuters