Meta appeals the Ofcom category that would add fraud-advertising duties to WhatsApp and Instagram

The duties in the contested category are program work. Greater transparency, more user controls, measures to protect users from fraudulent advertising and increased recording of illegal content each need staff, tooling and reporting pipelines ^[2]. The people who own those roadmaps at WhatsApp and Instagram now have a choice: build against a categorisation that is under appeal, or hold the spend and compress the build if the appeal fails. The Guardian's account leaves open whether the duties apply while the appeal is heard ^[16].

The cost of guessing wrong is set in the statute. A breach can draw a fine of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue or 18m pounds, whichever is higher ^[5]. Divide the flat figure by the percentage and the crossover sits at 180m pounds of qualifying worldwide revenue: above that line the percentage always governs and the 18m pounds never binds ^[14]. Legal fees are the price of litigating a categorisation decision, and a share of global revenue is the price of accepting one that turns out to be wrong.

Meta's earlier case goes at the same revenue measure from the other end. It was filed in London in May and argues that Ofcom's methodology for calculating charges is flawed and should not be based on a company's global revenue ^[4]. Ofcom funds the operating costs of its online safety work by drawing on a proportion of that revenue ^[6]. Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom's group director for online safety, told a House of Lords committee on Tuesday that the regulator was "operating in a highly litigious environment", counting two actions by Meta and judicial reviews from "a raft of services" over data collection ^[8]. "We have all come to work to make this happen, but, if we run unnecessary risks, we are going to get absolutely clobbered legally by deep-pocketed individuals and firms," he said ^[9].

The Guardian reports that social media companies are accused of using the courts to slow down implementation of the Online Safety Act, and places the appeal against a backdrop of hostility from US tech corporations and Donald Trump's White House over the fees and fines regime ^[3][15]. A Meta spokesperson described the filings differently. "These are not challenges to the law itself, but how Ofcom has interpreted it. This is a normal feature of any new regulatory regime being bedded in and ensures questions of process, scope and implementation get settled so the law is applied proportionately, accurately and consistently," the spokesperson said ^[11]. Both readings can hold together. An appeal that settles scope also moves the settling out of guidance a regulator publishes and into an outcome decided in litigation.

This week changes little for a compliance plan, but over the decade it changes who fixes scope. Lisa Nandy, the secretary for digital, culture, media and sport, vowed last week to keep introducing legislation to govern the internet ^[12]. "I think we're going to have to start getting used to the idea, actually, that government is going to be far quicker, far more interventionist, and I think I'm going to have to see the law updated regularly because tech is changing so fast that we've got to be able to respond," she told the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast ^[13]. Anyone writing a two-year trust-and-safety roadmap in the UK is writing against a rulebook Nandy's department intends to amend and against category boundaries under appeal.