Online Safety Bill: Social media faces big changes under new Ofcom rules

Platforms will also need to show they are committed to removing illegal content including child sexual abuse, promotion of self-harm and animal cruelty.

“It’s definitely not just a paper exercise,” said Dame Melanie. “We are very clear that the first step that any responsible company needs to take, is to actually access risks that they’ve never accessed before.”

She added that companies needed to be “honest and transparent” about what their “services are actually exposing their users to”.

“If we don’t think they’ve done that job well enough, we can take enforcement action, simply against that failure.”

Ofcom has already been in close contact with social networking services and Dame Melanie said when the new legal safeguards became enforceable the regulator would be “ready to go”.

She added: “We know that some of them are preparing but we are expecting very significant changes. ”