Online Safety
As Internet users face an ever-growing range of online harms, online safety has become a pressing area of regulatory focus. Singapore’s forthcoming Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Act 2025 (OSRA) marks a significant step forward in the nation’s approach to combating online harms. The OSRA introduces a comprehensive framework that prohibits a broad spectrum of harmful online activities and introduces new statutory torts, affording victims the ability to pursue civil remedies before the courts. It also imposes duties on platform administrators and online service providers to prevent, detect and respond to online harms in a responsible manner. Notably, the OSRA provides for the establishment of the Online Safety Commission (OSC), which offers victims an alternative avenue to seek practical relief. Among other powers, the OSC may issue directions to take down or block access to harmful content and may even take steps to help identify end-users who have perpetrated online harms anonymously.
The following article examines key features of the OSRA.