The UK’s Online Safety Act, enacted in October, 2023, officially came into force today – 17th March, 2025 – compelling social media platforms to remove illegal content such as child sexual abuse material and terrorist content, or face significant fines.
Despite the enforcement of new laws, concerns about freedom of speech, and the actual enforcement capabilities of the regulator OFCOM, remain, with some activists and families of victims advocating for even stricter regulations.
The author of this article, Neil Wilby, made a report under the Act, late last year, to Lancashire Constabulary (Lancs), expecting it to become effective very soon afterwards.
The complaint involved the requested removal of posts from the X (Twitter) platform of repeated and entirely unfounded allegations of sexual harassment.
The antagonist who posted those tweets, knowing the damage and distress they would cause, not just as a private individual with a completely clean criminal record, but to his vocation as a newsgatherer recognised by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, is very well known to that police force, but is not named here for a variety of legal reasons.
That same person was, belatedly, arrested on 30th January, 2025 by Lancs officers and released on conditional bail, over those specific social media posts and a multitude of others.
It will now be more than interesting, with Neil Wilby as one of its first stakeholders, to observe how Lancs progress the On-Line Safety Act report.
A vexatious report to Greater Manchester Police, in August, 2024, orchestrated by the same antagonist was not even recorded as a crime, so implausible was the ‘evidence’ provided. That same person has made six other vexatious reports to the police over the past two years about the same journalist. None of which have resulted in any action, apart from a grotesque waste of police time.
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Page last updated on Monday 17th March, 2025 at 14h15
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