Ofcom today opened a formal investigation into Meta over the Instagram Instants feature, checking whether the company met its risk assessment duties under Britain's online safety law before launching the feature.
The investigation does not mean that Meta was violated The law already. Ofcom stressed in its statement that the opening of the case represents the beginning of an examination process, and not a prior conclusion of wrongdoing.
The case focuses on whether Meta conducted “appropriate and adequate” assessments of the risks of illegal content and the risks to children before introducing Instagram Instants as a change in service design.
British law requires Covered Services to assess risk in specific cases, including when design changes are introduced that may be significant enough to alter the nature of users' interaction with or exposure to content.
Instants is a feature introduced by Instagram To enable users to send photos that disappear after being viewed within a limited social circle. According to Meta, content cannot be kept in the conversation in the traditional way, and the company has also placed restrictions on screenshots and screen recording, with additional controls linked to teen accounts and tools. FamilyCenter.
But the question for Ofcom is not just whether there are post-launch safeguards; The investigation focuses on the risk assessment process itself before the change.
This is a fundamental difference. New platform legislation in Europe and Britain is gradually moving to require companies to prove that they have thought in advance how to... Abuse the new functionality, not wait until a problem arises and then intervene.
Reuters described the case as Ofcom's first formal investigation into Meta under this aspect of the Online Safety Act. Meta said, according to the report, that it had conducted a risk analysis, briefed Ofcom on the feature, and would cooperate with Investigation.
If at the end of the process the authority finds breaches that are eligible for enforcement action, the powers of the Online Safety Act allow for financial penalties that can be up to £18 million or 10% of eligible global revenue, whichever is greater, according to Ofcom. But this maximum does not mean that a fine has been imposed on Meta; No violation has been ruled yet.
The importance of the investigation extends to the rest of the platforms. If regulators come to require clear risk assessment records before features are released, the product teams themselves will need to consolidate Legal and security considerations and protection of minors in the early design stages.
To the user, Instants just seems like a new way to share a temporary photo. For a regulator, the disappearance of content may change the way they report, collect evidence, or monitor abuse, which is... This makes the risk assessment process subject to scrutiny.
