Online Safety Act 2023

Online safety objectives

5 The online safety objectives for regulated search services are as follows—

(a) a service should be designed and operated in such a way that—

(i) the systems and processes for regulatory compliance and risk management are effective and proportionate to the kind and size of service,

(ii) the systems and processes are appropriate to deal with the number of users of the service and its user base,

(iii) United Kingdom users (including children) are made aware of, and can understand, the publicly available statement referred to in sections 27 and 29,

(iv) there are adequate systems and processes to support United Kingdom users,

(v) the service provides a higher standard of protection for children than for adults, and

(vi) the different needs of children at different ages are taken into account;

(b) a service should be assessed to understand its use by, and impact on, children in different age groups;

(c) a search engine should be designed and operated so as to protect individuals in the United Kingdom who are users of the service from harm, including with regard to—

(i) algorithms used by the search engine,

(ii) functionalities relating to searches (such as a predictive search functionality), and

(iii) the indexing, organisation and presentation of search results.