Tackling illegal and harmful content online is a priority for many countries—and their citizens—globally. The EU and UK are no exception. In recent years, both jurisdictions have introduced new laws, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA), which impose rules on providers of services that host user-generated content (UGC) to remove or limit the reach of illegal and, in some cases, legal but “harmful”, UGC on their services.

Prior to introducing the DSA and the OSA, both the EU and UK primarily relied on the safe harbour framework established by the eCommerce Directive (eCD) to address illegal UGC online, with some additional rules for video-sharing platforms under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Although both jurisdictions were working from broadly this same starting point, the DSA and OSA take very different approaches to further regulating services that host UGC.