How Singapore’s Online-Safety Regime Works

The powers can also reach other parts of the distribution chain. Depending on the direction, the relevant recipient may include an internet-access provider or an app-distribution service. The framework therefore gives victims an avenue beyond a platform’s ordinary reporting process, while still allowing the underlying dispute to proceed through other legal routes where appropriate.

OSRA also supports accountability. The supplied legislative materials provide for mechanisms that can help a victim obtain information identifying an alleged perpetrator, subject to the Act’s requirements.

2. OCHA targets online activity that enables crime

The Online Criminal Harms Act (OCHA) serves a different purpose. It is not primarily a victim-initiated remedy for every harmful post; it allows designated officers to intervene where online activity is linked to, or is preparatory to, specified criminal conduct.

The Act allows directions to be issued to online service providers, other entities or individuals when there is reasonable suspicion that online activity is in furtherance of an offence listed under the Act. The framework covers offences affecting national security, national harmony and individual safety, among other categories.

OCHA also contains a lower threshold for scams and malicious cyber activities because these harms can develop rapidly and at scale. Directions can restrict users’ exposure to criminal activity, require information, restrict accounts or disable access to online material. The Act also provides for access-blocking and app-removal mechanisms.

This makes OCHA particularly suited to disrupting an online operation—such as a scam network, a criminal website or content used to facilitate an offence—rather than resolving a private dispute between two individuals.

3. IMDA can act against egregious content

The Broadcasting Act amendments give IMDA a separate content-removal and blocking role. IMDA can direct social-media services to disable Singapore users’ access to “egregious content,” including material advocating or instructing suicide or self-harm, physical or sexual violence or terrorism, as well as child-sexual-exploitation material. The framework also covers content posing public-health risks or likely to cause racial or religious disharmony.

If a service does not comply, IMDA can direct internet-access service providers to block access in Singapore. IMDA has used this structure in relation to child-sexual-exploitation material, directing a service to review and remove a Facebook page and group and directing internet providers to block a linked website.

Non-compliance with a blocking direction can attract a fine of up to $20,000 for each day or part of a day, capped at $500,000 under the cited legislative provision.

The practical distinction is important: OSC directions respond to reported victim-centred online harm, while IMDA’s Broadcasting Act powers address content considered sufficiently serious to warrant regulator-led intervention for public protection.

4. The 2023 Code makes social-media safety a system obligation

The Code of Practice for Online Safety—Social Media Services took effect in 2023 for designated services. Rather than focusing only on individual removals, it requires system-level measures to reduce users’ exposure to harmful content, effective and easy-to-use reporting mechanisms, and greater transparency and accountability.

Child safety is a central emphasis. Designated services must take proactive steps to detect and swiftly remove child-sexual-exploitation and terrorism content before users encounter it.

The Code also requires designated services to submit annual online-safety reports for publication. These reports give IMDA and the public information about the services’ moderation, reporting and safety arrangements, making platform safeguards more visible than they would be through individual takedown decisions alone.

5. The 2025 Code extends protection to app stores

The 2025 Code of Practice for Online Safety—App Distribution Services took effect on 31 March 2025. It extends Singapore’s preventive approach beyond social networks to designated app stores.

The Code requires system-level measures to reduce users’ risk of exposure to harmful content through apps, with particular attention to children. Its framework includes safeguards related to age ratings, child safety, parental controls, reporting and age assurance.

That creates a two-stage model of child protection:

1. app-distribution services help determine what users—especially children—can discover or download; and
2. social-media services manage harmful content and user interactions once people are on a platform.

This distinction matters because an unsafe experience can begin before a user creates an account or encounters a particular post.

How the pieces fit together

The clearest way to choose the relevant route is to start with the harm and the outcome needed:

• Need urgent removal or account restrictions after personal online harm? The OSC is designed for specified categories such as harassment, doxxing, stalking and image-based abuse.
• Is an account, website or service helping to carry out a crime? OCHA allows designated officers to issue directions that restrict exposure, disable content or limit accounts and services.
• Does the material fall within IMDA’s egregious-content categories? IMDA can direct services to disable access and, where necessary, direct internet providers to block access in Singapore.
• Is the concern systemic platform safety? The social-media and app-distribution Codes impose preventive, reporting, transparency and child-safety expectations on designated services.

These mechanisms can operate in parallel. A victim of image-based abuse might seek an OSC direction to stop continuing harm, report potentially criminal conduct to the authorities, and use the platform’s reporting channel. Separately, IMDA’s regulatory powers may become relevant if the material falls within its egregious-content framework or if a designated service fails to meet its wider online-safety obligations.

The central change is that responsibility no longer rests solely on victims to report harmful posts after the fact. Singapore’s framework now combines faster individual relief with government disruption powers and ex-ante platform duties designed to reduce foreseeable harm before it spreads.