Britain's communications regulator, Ofcom, opened a formal investigation on Tuesday, Oct. 6, into whether Menlo Park-based Meta broke the UK's Online Safety Act when it launched a disappearing-content feature on Instagram.
What Instants does
Meta rolled out Instants on May 13, according to Ofcom's case notice. The feature lives inside Instagram's direct messages and lets people snap a photo or video inside the app and send it straight to friends and followers. Users are prompted to add a caption before shooting, the content is shared automatically, and it disappears after it is viewed. Screenshots are blocked.
What Ofcom is examining
Under the 2023 law, platforms must assess the risk that people in the UK will run into illegal content, and services likely to be used by children must also assess the risk of minors seeing harmful material. Before making a significant change to a service's design, a company has to update those assessments. Ofcom says it will determine whether Meta did a "suitable and sufficient" illegal content assessment and children's risk assessment before Instants went live.
"Our online safety laws are clear – significant changes to platforms must be risk assessed before they're launched," George Lusty, Ofcom's director of enforcement, said, according to Reuters. He added that safety has to be built in rather than "bolted on."
Opening an investigation does not mean Ofcom has concluded Meta broke the law. The regulator will first gather evidence. If it believes there was a breach, it will issue a provisional decision, give Meta a chance to respond, and then make a final ruling. Penalties under the act can reach £18 million or 10% of a company's qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.
Meta's response
A Meta spokesperson said the company "conducted a risk analysis and briefed Ofcom about this feature on a number of occasions before launching it," Reuters reported. Meta pointed to built-in protections, including blocks on screenshots, resharing and forwarding, no public feed, and Teen Account protections switched on automatically, and said it would cooperate.
A wider legal fight
The probe lands as Meta, TikTok and X challenge Ofcom in England's High Court over how much information the regulator can demand from tech companies, the BBC and City AM reported. Meta has also argued that fines should not be based on global revenue. Ofcom told City AM that the court case had not affected the timing of its decision and that it would pursue the Instagram investigation as a priority.