KEY TAKEAWAYS
- X has committed to blocking UK access to accounts operated by or on behalf of organisations proscribed under UK law, covering extremist and militant groups.
- Under the agreement, X must review at least 85% of flagged illegal hate content and extremist material within 48 hours of identification.
- X will engage external experts to improve its reporting systems following concerns from civil society groups that flagged content was not consistently acted upon.
- X will submit quarterly performance data to Ofcom over the next 12 months, allowing the regulator to monitor compliance directly.
Ofcom announced on 15 May 2026 that X had formally committed to strengthening protections for UK users by restricting accounts linked to organisations banned under domestic law and accelerating action against flagged illegal content.
Ofcom online safety director Oliver Griffiths said the commitments followed “intensive engagement” with the platform, warning that terrorist material and illegal hate speech continued to persist across major social media sites, per The Guardian.
The agreement marks a significant shift for X, criticised over content moderation since Elon Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion in 2022. The move also comes amid mounting UK regulatory pressure on major US technology firms, including Meta’s Online Safety Act fee calculation review proceedings at the High Court.
What X Has Committed to Under the Agreement
Earlier BBC coverage confirmed that X must restrict UK access to accounts operated by organisations proscribed under British terrorism and extremism laws.
The platform also committed to reviewing suspected illegal hate and extremist content within 24 hours on average, while assessing at least 85% of flagged posts within 48 hours.
X will appoint independent experts to evaluate its reporting systems following criticism from civil society groups, including the Antisemitism Policy Trust.
Chief executive Danny Stone called the agreement “a good start,” while Tech Against Terrorism executive Adam Hadley described it as “a powerful example” of regulator-platform cooperation.
Ofcom will monitor compliance through quarterly data submissions over the next 12 months under the Online Safety Act framework.
What Ofcom’s Investigation Into Grok Means for the Bigger Picture
As SFGate confirmed, Ofcom stressed that a separate investigation into X remains ongoing, covering both the platform’s wider systems for handling illegal content and specific concerns surrounding its Grok AI tool.
Grok, xAI’s generative AI model embedded across X’s interface, has been under Ofcom scrutiny following reports that it generated content inconsistent with the platform’s own stated policies.
The platform did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the May 15 announcement.
X had previously taken a confrontational stance towards Ofcom, accusing the regulator of a “heavy-handed approach” that “seriously infringed” on free speech protections.
The formal agreement marks a big shift in relations, though the wider probe reflects growing warnings from UK regulators to firms about the risks of poorly governed AI systems operating at scale, concerns applying as directly to Grok as to any other frontier model deployed on a public platform.
Source: X to block UK access to accounts linked to terrorist groups in Ofcom agreement
