On 30 October 2026, the High Court dismissed the challenges brought by Meta, X and TikTok to the information notices Ofcom issued under the Online Safety Act 2023. According to the court's own press summary, it was the first judicial review to test Ofcom's power to issue such notices. The judges were Lord Justice Singh and Mrs Justice Collins Rice. The result is predictable in law and still significant in practice.
The strongest case for Ofcom
The case for the regulator is a good one. A regulator cannot judge whether platforms are meeting their duties without data on what they remove, what they restrict and who sees what. Ofcom said after the ruling that gathering information from companies is "fundamental to our ability to do our job of assessing compliance with their duties", as City AM reported. Platforms hold the only complete record of their own moderation. Without a compulsory route to it, regulation would depend on voluntary transparency reports that each company designs for itself.
The notices were also not a surprise. The press summary records that Ofcom issued them in February 2026 "after several months of dialogue" with the claimants.
What the court decided
Section 100 of the Act lets Ofcom require providers to supply "any information that they require for the purpose of exercising, or deciding whether to exercise, any of their online safety functions". The same section says the power "must be exercised in a way that is proportionate to the use to which the information is to be put". The court's summary quotes both passages.
The notices asked for six categories of information:
- definitions each provider uses;
- total user activity, broken down by age group;
- volumes of content and accounts subject to moderation action, and how long that action took;
- UK users' exposure to content that was actioned;
- appeal outcomes and processing times;
- volumes and outcomes of user reports.
The platforms argued that the notices were beyond Ofcom's powers and disproportionate. They also argued that Ofcom had used the powers for an improper purpose, breached its duty to make impact assessments, had a closed mind, and ignored its own published policies. The court rejected every ground apart from proportionality as "unarguable either as a matter of law or on the facts". It gave permission on proportionality and then decided that question on the merits. City AM reports that the platforms had argued Ofcom unlawfully bypassed the Act's specific transparency framework. It also reports that the court found the information-gathering powers served a distinct regulatory purpose.
Where the proportionality finding is thin
The proportionality ruling is the part to read closely. The court weighed Ofcom's objectives and the importance of the data against the burden on the companies. It found the claimants' evidence of onerousness lacking: it "does not sufficiently identify the necessary baselines or differential resource impact". It concluded that "no finding of a lack of overall fairness is therefore sustainable on the materials before the court".
That is a ruling about evidence, not a ruling that no notice could ever be too burdensome. The platforms lost partly because they did not show what the notices would cost them compared with what they already do. Meta said it was disappointed and that "information-gathering of this scale goes beyond what is necessary or proportionate". The court did not accept that on the evidence it had.
Why a pro-innovation reader should care
An open internet and a growing UK tech sector need regulators with accurate information, and a regulator that cannot get data tends to reach for blunter rules. So the ruling is defensible. The risk lies in how the power is used from here.
The notices went to three of the largest companies in the world, which can staff a response team. Section 100 applies to any provider in scope, including small services. Ofcom's Online Safety Information Powers Guidance, published on 15 December 2025, has sections on enforcement action and on criminal liability for failing to comply. A burden that a large platform can absorb could be decisive for a small one. Evidence of that burden is what the proportionality test turns on, and this ruling shows how much that evidence matters.
There is also a free-expression angle. Data on removed and restricted posts is useful for accountability. Once regulators track removal rates, though, platforms have a reason to over-remove to look compliant. The best use of this data is to compare what platforms say they do with what they do, not to set removal targets.
What Ofcom should do next
- Publish aggregate findings. Public reporting on what the data shows would let outsiders check Ofcom's reasoning and would justify the cost of collecting it.
- Standardise definitions. The first category of request asks providers to explain their own definitions. Ofcom should move towards common definitions so the data can be compared.
- Scale requests to the recipient. Smaller services should see notices sized to their capacity, with burden assessments recorded.
- Treat the ruling as narrow. It decided these notices on this evidence. Reuters coverage relayed by PYMNTS describes the case as an early legal test of the Act, and more challenges are likely.
Bottom line
The court has confirmed that Ofcom can require detailed moderation and exposure data from major platforms. That is a reasonable power for a regulator overseeing risks to children and other users. The safeguard left standing is proportionality, and the court said platforms must prove burden with specifics. Whether the regime stays proportionate will depend on Ofcom keeping its requests targeted, publishing what it learns, and not assuming that every future notice will pass a test this one passed on thin evidence.