Tim Bernard is a tech policy analyst and writer, specializing in trust & safety and content moderation. T. Schneider / Shutterstock.com The genesis of the UK Online Safety Act can be dated to 2017, and so when Parliament finally approved the bill in September and it received royal assent last month, it may have felt like the end of a very long road for the legislation. That “end” would have been a mirage. The Online Safety Act provides for Ofcom, the British telecoms regulator, to draft codes of conduct in several critical areas, and leaves significant discretion in how the act is to be interpreted and enforced. Each code of conduct will be released as a draft for consultation, and then the finalized versions will each require parliamentary approval. Ofcom’s timetable projects that the final codes will not be finalized and take effect until some time in 2026. Ofcom timeline for online safety implementation (Source) Although this may seem like a lengthy process, the release of the first tranche of draft guidance and codes casts the timeline in a rather different light. This is material presented for consultation, and tech policy expert Mathias Vermeulen counted 1714 pages of substantive content in the release. Comments are due by February 23, 2024, and so the time frame is not particularly generous, especially when considering that the materials drop for the next phase is scheduled for December. What is in this consultation package? The topic of this phase is online services’ duties to…The Online Safety Act: Royal Assent Was Only the Beginning