TL;DR Meta has filed an appeal against Ofcom’s decision to place WhatsApp and Instagram in Category 1 under the UK’s Online Safety Act. Category 1 imposes extra transparency, fraudulent-ad safeguards, stronger user controls and fuller record-keeping on illegal content. It is Meta’s second Ofcom challenge this year; Roblox and Quora are separately contesting their own Category 1 designations. Meta has filed an appeal against Ofcom’s decision to place WhatsApp and Instagram in Category 1, the tier of the UK’s Online Safety Act that carries the heaviest transparency, fraudulent-ad and user-control duties, the Financial Times reported. Meta says it is contesting Ofcom’s interpretation, not the underlying law. “These are not challenges to the law itself, but how Ofcom has interpreted it,” a Meta spokesperson said, framing the action as ensuring the regime is applied “proportionately, accurately and consistently.” The company argues that some Category 1 duties were not designed for private one-to-one and small-group messaging. Under Ofcom’s rules, a user-to-user service enters Category 1 either by exceeding 34 million monthly active UK users while running a content recommender system, or by exceeding 7 million with a recommender system and a feature that lets users forward or share user-generated content. Ofcom’s register
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