Key Takeaways
- A new law in the U.K. holds dating and social media platforms accountable for protecting users from cyberflashing, with financial consequences if they fail.
- Bumble, Tinder, and Grindr are just a few of the apps to take a preventive approach to online safety with ID verification features and consent tools.
- The U.K.’s dedication to user safety is seen in the Online Dating Act of 2023 and in the recently published plan to crack down on violence against women and children.
A law that took effect Jan. 8 now holds dating and social media platforms in the U.K. accountable for preventing and removing unsolicited nude images before they’re seen by users.
As part of this law, cyberflashing has been upgraded to a priority offense. Modern times require modern approaches to safety. The law indicates the age-old reactionary response to unsolicited nudes just doesn’t cut it anymore.
“While sending non-consensual explicit pictures has been a criminal offence since 2024, in-scope services will now be required to take additional steps or face sanctions from Ofcom as the regulator of the OSA,” Simon Newman, CEO of the Online Dating and Discovery Association, told DatingNews.
Liz Kendall, the U.K.’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, explained how platforms need to be one step ahead of the bad actors who creep their way into people’s inboxes.
“We’ve cracked down on perpetrators of this vile crime – now we’re turning up the heat on tech firms,” she said. “Platforms are now required by law to detect and prevent this material.”
The U.K.’s newly aggressive approach to online safety is a long time coming, and based on concerning data: A YouGov survey found that 1 in 3 teenage girls have received unsolicited sexual images.
The Online Safety Act of 2023 set out to make the online and offline worlds safer for groups disproportionately targeted by bad actors, including women and children. The act makes platforms go the extra mile to prevent illegal content and behavior, such as stalking, harassment, and yes, the distribution of sexually explicit images.
Prevention is Entirely Up to the Platforms
With this new law, the onus isn’t only on flashers to keep their privates to themselves, but on dating and social media platforms to step up their cyberflashing prevention protocols.
If a platform fails to prevent cyberflashing, then it will face fines of up to 10% of its qualifying worldwide revenue. In some cases, platforms will even end up blocked or banned.
Jess Phillips, Minister for Safeguarding and Violence against Women and Girls, said violence prevention is a “mainstream responsibility” of all platforms: “It should no longer be an add-on when someone dies or lessons learned after a tragedy.”
No more “thoughts and prayers” when tragedy strikes; now platforms are expected to prevent these tragedies from happening in the first place.
Gone are the days where dick pics were likened to internet trolls. Now they’re a criminal offense that not only reflects negatively on the sender, but on the platform that let the pic sneak through.
The U.K.’s communication regulator, Ofcom, will establish new codes of practice for tech platforms to follow in order to comply with the new law and effectively protect users from unsolicited sexual content.
“The Government expects tech platforms to adopt the measures in the guidance, and Ofcom will be monitoring this and will publish a report on platforms’ performance,” according to the policy paper.
Platforms Must Balance Prevention with User Choice
This new safety approach of “prevention vs. reaction” isn’t actually new at all. Many dating platforms have implemented verification systems and AI detection tools to better protect against unsolicited nudes and the bad actors who send them.
Newman told DatingNews that many online platforms “have already implemented a range of measures to prevent or detect non-consensual explicit images as part of their wider commitment to taking a ‘safety by design’ approach in platform design.”
The Online Safety Act credits Bumble as the first dating app to moderate cyberflashing with an AI feature called Private Detector, which aims to blur nudity in images sent in chats.
The AI feature gives the user something the perpetrator purposefully took away: the option to give or deny consent.
While blurring the image, Private Detector lets the recipient know that the image is of a sexually explicit nature, and gives them the option to accept, block, or report the image and the account that sent it.
Elymae Cedeno, VP of Trust and Safety at Bumble, described in the U.K.’s cross-government policy paper that Private Detector is all about putting control back into the user’s hands. “As part of our long standing safety commitments, Bumble introduced features like Private Detector … giving members greater control over what they see.”
Giving users more control does not mean it’s their responsibility to suss out bad actors, however.
Last year, Tinder’s new ID verification tool, Face Check, reportedly cut user exposure to bad actors by 60% by assessing their identity at the very beginning of the onboarding process. All the user has to do is upload a video selfie, and the app does the hard work for them.
“We hear regularly from our community about the impact of this behaviour,” Cedeno said. “We welcome measures that increase accountability and help create a safer digital environment.”
The UK’s Safety Strategy Goes Far Beyond the Online World
The new cyberflashing law comes from the U.K.’s larger effort to, as the Prime Minister said, “halve violence against women and girls in a decade.”
In December, the U.K. government published its cross-government policy paper, which details its plans to combat violence against women and children.
“It is the first step in a truly national endeavor that prioritizes prevention, tackling the root causes of this violence, while relentlessly pursuing its perpetrators and supporting its victims and survivors,” the Prime Minister said in the report.
And cyberflashing is only the tip of the iceberg. The rise of AI nudification tools and deepfake software is an equally imminent threat to user safety, which is why the U.K. government set out to criminalize the creation of intimate images without consent.
On Jan. 14, Kendall confirmed that Parliament will soon receive legislation on this matter.
“Government will bring into force as a matter of urgency powers to criminalise the creation of intimate images without consent, building on existing legislation which bans sharing, or threatening to share non-consensual intimate images,” Kendall wrote in a letter to Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.
Safety legislation has not been easy to obtain, however. In 2025, the U.K. government deflected outside calls to get involved in generative AI regulation. Now, Dame Chi Onwurah is calling for transparency.
“Whilst it’s encouraging to hear the government’s pledge to address gaps in the Online Safety Act, this comes months after rejecting the committee’s recommendations to explicitly regulate generative AI and put greater responsibility on platforms like X and Grok,” she pointed out.
Her blend of skepticism and optimism is mirrored by other industry leaders, including Newman. He told DatingNews that this crackdown on cyberflashing and nudification tools is a long time coming.
“We believe this sends a clear message that abuse has no place online and strengthens our shared commitment to protecting users, upholding consent and fostering safer connections,” he said.
