It obliges large social media platforms not to remove, and to preserve access to, journalistic or "democratically important" content such as user comments on political parties and issues.

Content includes written material or messages, oral communications, photographs, videos, visual images, music and data of any description.

[16] Large social networks would be required to protect "democratically important" content, such as user-submitted posts supporting or opposing particular political parties or policies.

[22] According to the government, the act addresses the major concern expressed by campaigners such as the Open Rights Group[23] about the risk to user privacy with the Digital Economy Act 2017's[24] requirement for age verification by creating, on services within scope of the legislation, "A duty to have regard to the importance of... protecting users from unwarranted infringements of privacy, when deciding on, and implementing, safety policies and procedures.

"[13] In February 2022 the Digital Economy Minister, Chris Philp, announced that the bill (as it then was) would be amended to bring commercial pornographic websites within its scope.

In early February 2022, ministers planned to add to their existing proposal several criminal offences against those who send death threats online or deliberately share dangerous disinformation about fake cures for COVID-19.

Other new offences, such as revenge porn, posts advertising people-smuggling, and messages encouraging people to commit suicide, would fall under the responsibilities of online platforms like Facebook and Twitter to tackle.

[35] During an interview for the BBC, Rebecca MacKinnon, the vice president for global advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation, criticised the OSB, saying the threat of "harsh" new criminal penalties for tech bosses would affect "not only big corporations, but also public interest websites, such as Wikipedia".

[36] In April 2023, both MacKinnon and the chief executive of Wikimedia UK, Lucy Crompton-Reid, announced that the WMF did not intend to apply the age-check requirements of the act to Wikipedia users, stating that it would violate their commitment to collect minimal data about readers and contributors.

[37][38] On 29 June of the same year, WMUK and the WMF officially published an open letter, asking the government and Parliament to exempt "public interest projects", including Wikipedia itself, from the OSB before it entered its report stage, starting on 6 July.

[45] Ciaran Martin, a former head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, accused the government of "magical thinking" and said that scanning for child abuse content would necessarily require weakening the privacy of encrypted messages.

[30] Alan Woodward, a computer scientist at the University of Surrey, commented that scanning encrypted messages would make mass surveillance "almost an inevitability" as security forces would be liable to mission creep, using the justification of "exceptional circumstances" to extend searches beyond their origin remit.