The High Court of London dismissed Meta, TikTok and X’s lawsuits against the British regulator Ofcom and agreed that it has the right to require platforms to provide data on moderation and the spread of harmful content, The Insider reports.
In February 2026, Ofcom sent the companies official requests under the Online Safety Act and demanded statistics on the number of removed posts and blocked accounts, cases of content visibility restrictions, and the number of users, including minors, who encountered harmful materials. The regulator asked for some of the information to be broken down by age groups.
Ofcom said that it needs this data to assess the scale of dangerous and illegal content, verify the effectiveness of moderation, and understand how well social networks comply with British legislation. The regulator also wanted to find out whether the number of harmful materials users encounter is decreasing and how effectively platforms protect children.
Meta, TikTok and X tried to challenge the legality of the requests in a single proceeding because their complaints concerned Ofcom’s powers under the new law. The companies argued that the demands were disproportionate: TikTok spoke of the need to collect large volumes of statistics over three years, X — of several months of work and costs amounting to millions of pounds sterling, and Meta insisted that the regulator had gone beyond its powers.
The court rejected these arguments and noted that the companies had not presented sufficiently convincing evidence of an excessive burden. Ofcom welcomed the decision and said that obtaining information from technology companies is necessary to monitor compliance with the law.
The Online Safety Act was passed in 2023 and is being implemented gradually; for the most serious violations it provides for fines of up to 10% of a company’s global annual turnover. According to the report, Meta continues other disputes with the regulator, including over the method for calculating fees and possible fines, as well as over the application of the new regulation to WhatsApp.
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