High Court Upholds Ofcom Notices Demanding Data from Meta, X and TikTok

The High Court has upheld Ofcom's power to demand wide sets of data from Meta, WhatsApp, X and TikTok. In a judgment dated 30 October, Lord Justice Singh and Mrs Justice Collins Rice dismissed coordinated judicial reviews of information notices issued in February under the Online Safety Act 2023. The neutral citation is [2026] EWHC 2779 (Admin).

The claimants were Meta Platforms Inc and WhatsApp LLC, X Internet Unlimited Company, and TikTok Information Technologies UK Ltd. Each asked the King's Bench Divisional Court to quash a notice that requires the company to hand Ofcom material for its work under the Act. The notices remain in force.

What the platforms argued

The companies said Ofcom had gone beyond its powers, asked for information it did not need, failed to carry out an impact assessment, and imposed a burden that was disproportionate. They also raised human-rights grounds. The court refused permission on most of the challenge because those grounds were not reasonably arguable. It allowed the proportionality and human-rights arguments to go forward, then dismissed them on the merits.

The judgment finds that the companies' evidence did not show the cost and effort of supplying the information outweighed the statutory job Ofcom is required to do. That is the heart of a case about a new regulator's first serious demand for data. If the notices had fallen, every later demand would have been written more narrowly. They have not fallen.

What the ruling does, and what it leaves open

This is a first-instance decision of the Divisional Court. The companies can ask for permission to appeal. Until a higher court says otherwise, Ofcom can require the material and can treat a refusal as a breach of the Act. For users, the practical change is indirect. The regulator is stronger in the arguments it can take into the next round of codes, risk assessments and enforcement. For the companies, the practical change is immediate: the February notices are not suspended by this claim.

The case sits beside a year in which Parliament and the courts have been asked, repeatedly, how far British law reaches into platforms. A separate claim over generated intimate images is already testing liability for what a system produces. Friday's judgment tests something prior: whether the regulator can see enough of the system to do the job the statute describes.

The same day, in a different court, Ms Justice Obi dismissed a challenge by the Lynx UK Trust to Natural England's refusal to take forward a licence to release Eurasian lynx in Kielder Forest. And Master Sullivan held that an 11 million pound claim could not proceed where solicitors had taken an assignment of their client's cause of action through a company. Friday was a busy list. The Ofcom ruling is the one with a national argument attached, because it tells the largest platforms that the Online Safety Act's demand for information is, for now, lawful.