LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Britain’s communications regulator said on Tuesday it has opened an investigation into whether Meta Platforms breached UK online safety laws by failing to properly assess risks posed by its Instagram Instants feature before launching it in May.
Instants allows content shared by users in social media platform Instagram to disappear after being viewed.
Ofcom said its formal investigation would establish if Meta carried out a “suitable and sufficient” assessments into the risk of illegal content in the feature or any possible risks posed to children before launch.
George Lusty, director of enforcement at Ofcom, said: “Our online safety laws are clear – significant changes to platforms must be risk assessed before they’re launched.”
He said safety by design had to be built in and not bolted on. “Today’s investigation shows we’ll take action where we have concerns that providers are failing to comply,” he added.
Meta said it took 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,” a spokesperson said.
“Instants has in-built protections, including blocking screenshots, reshares and forwarding, no public feed, and Teen Account protections on automatically.”
“We will of course co-operate with Ofcom during this investigation,” it added.
Meta has launched legal challenges against Ofcom over its implementation of the Online Safety Act, including the scale and the scope of the information it has to provide to the regulator, and the level of fees it charges.
(Reporting by Raechel Thankam Job in Bengaluru and Paul Sandle in London; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Sarah Young)
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