X has agreed to process the vast majority of content flagged as illegal “hate” under the UK’s Online Safety Act within 48 hours, giving Ofcom, Britain’s speech regulator, a significant new enforcement win.
The platform committed to “review and assess UK suspected illegal terrorist and “hate” content reported through its dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool on average within 24 hours of it being reported, to be calculated as a mean” and to “review and assess at least 85% of UK suspected illegal terrorist and hate content reported through its dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool within a maximum of 48 hours.”
The deal is a notable reversal for a platform that, less than a year ago, publicly accused Ofcom of taking a “heavy-handed approach” and warned that the Online Safety Act was “seriously infringing” on free expression.
X’s August 2025 statement, titled “What Happens When Oversight Becomes Overreach,” called out regulators by name and argued that the law amounted to a “conscientious decision to increase censorship in the name of ‘online safety.'” That language is gone now. What’s left is a compliance agreement with specific performance targets and a 12-month reporting obligation.
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The commitments go beyond speed of review. X also agreed to block access to accounts in the UK if they are reported for “posting UK illegal terrorist content” and deemed to be “operated by or on behalf of a terrorist organisation proscribed in the UK.”
The platform will share quarterly performance data with Ofcom so the regulator can audit compliance. And following complaints from organizations that couldn’t tell whether X had received or acted on their reports, X agreed to “engage with experts regarding reporting systems for illegal hate and terror content.”
Who those experts are tells you something about the direction of travel. Ofcom’s own press release names the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) as one of the organizations it worked with to “gather evidence about suspected illegal terrorist content and illegal hate speech online.”
The CCDH is a pro-censorship campaign group co-founded in 2018 by Imran Ahmed and Morgan McSweeney, who went on to become UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.
McSweeney stepped down from CCDH’s board two days after Starmer became Labour leader. The organization maintains close ties to the current government and has stated that its goal was to “kill Musk’s Twitter,” according to leaked internal documents reported by Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker.
Ahmed himself was sanctioned by the US State Department in December 2025 over concerns that his organization had led “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints.” A federal court blocked his deportation with a temporary restraining order.
This is the organization Ofcom chose to help build the evidence base for pressuring X into compliance. Ahmed, for his part, welcomed the deal. Speaking to POLITICO, he said CCDH will be “watching closely to ensure this results in meaningful action, not just words.”
Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom’s Online Safety Group Director, framed the agreement as a necessary step. “We have evidence that terrorist content and illegal hate speech is persisting on some of the largest social media sites,” he said.
“We are challenging them to tackle the problem and expect them to take firm action.”
X’s agreement also includes the dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool, which is specifically designed for flagging content that violates Britain’s censorship law.
That tool creates a direct pipeline from whoever reports the content to X’s review queue, and from there to Ofcom’s auditing process. The 24-hour average and 48-hour backstop create a system where the pressure is always toward deletion. When you have to process 85% of flagged content within two days and a regulator is auditing your speed, the incentive is to delete first and reconsider never.
Every platform operating in the UK is watching this deal and calculating the cost of resistance versus compliance. The message from Ofcom is clear: agree to our terms, on our timeline, using our preferred partners as evidence sources, or face investigation, fines, and potential shutdown.
