New polling reveals strong public support for the Online Safety Act

New research commissioned by Clean Up The Internet and conducted by Opinium provides up to date insights into public attitudes towards the OSA. It suggests that calls to repeal the OSA are significantly out of step with public opinion.

The opinion polling, conducted 28th November to 2nd December 2025, asked a representative sample of UK adults a series of questions about the Online Safety Act and found that:

• 70% are supportive of the Online Safety Act (vs 12% opposed)
• 49% think its implementation is too slow (vs 10% too fast)
• 71% consider fake and anonymous social media accounts are a serious problem, with 62% are concerned about Ofcom’s decision to further delay implementation of the OSA’s user verification duties
• A strong majority support the OSA across all regions, demographics, political parties

Whilst the “repeal the OSA” petition, which will be debated in Parliament on Monday (15 December), has received over 500,000 signatures, along with the support of some politicians as well as far-right influencers such as “Tommy Robinson”, it does not appear to reflect a broader groundswell of opposition.

Notably, the polling suggests strong public support for the OSA across all supporters of all political parties, including those parties more critical of the OSA. Respondents who support Reform UK also express support for the OSA, by a margin of 60% to 22%. These findings align with those from More In Common's research earlier this year, which found that concerns about online safety were high amongst parents across all political views. Indeed 67% of British parents in More in Common's survey said they would feel more positively towards a political party that supported increasing online safety protections. (Voting intention: Labour 78%; Conservative 72%; Reform 61%; LibDem 76%; Green 71%)

Alongside finding very low levels of opposition to the OSA, the new Opinium research finds dissatisfaction with the slow pace at which it is being implemented by Ofcom. Worryingly, only 19% of respondents consider online safety to have improved since the Act was passed, compared to 24% believing it has got worse. There may be some encouragement in the fact that parents with children under 18 are more likely to consider safety to have improved, with 33% reporting an improvement and only 19% reporting things had got worse. This could suggest that child safety measures, such as Age Verification to prevent children encountering adult content, are starting to make a difference.

However, two years after the OSA became law, twice as many people (37% vs 19%) are reporting having experienced no change in online safety than are reporting an improvement. This raises questions about the pace of progress. Almost half of respondents (49%) felt that implementation is too slow (vs only 10% who consider it too fast).

The research asked further questions about Ofcom’s recent decision to delay, by a further six months, implementation of the OSA’s user verification duty, which is intended to help address issues with fake and anonymous accounts. Further delays to user verification measures are not popular with the public. 71% consider fake and anonymous social media accounts to be a serious problem. 62% stated that they were concerned about Ofcom’s decision to delay the implementation of user verification measures. [Full results: Polling Tables Archive - Opinium]

Note: The user verification duties are one of a number of duties that have been delayed by Ofcom in the wake of the legal challenge from Wikimedia over the summer: fraudulent advertising; transparency reporting; user empowerment; and terms of service duties will now not be consulted on until summer 2026 and will not be in force until late 2027. See Ofcom's timeline for more details.