What is the Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Bill (OSRA)?

Parliament passed the Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Bill (OSRA) on 5 Nov 2025. The Bill is intended to help victims of online harm receive timely, effective and accessible redress.

Why the Need for OSRA

When online harm occurs, action must be taken quickly and effectively. Feedback from victims shows that  many simply want the content removed quickly.. Victims are daunted by the existing channels for seeking remedies. In particular, they find court processes complex and expensive. Victims also find it difficult to seek resolution as they are unable to identify who was responsible for the harm.

What is OSRA

The OSRA Bill aims to strengthen online safety while protecting victims of online harms in three ways.

1. Establishment of the Online Safety Commission (OSC)

The OSRA Bill will establish the office of the Commissioner of Online Safety. The Commissioner will be supported by a new agency called the Online Safety Commission (OSC), to be set up in the first half of 2026.

The OSC will be empowered to issue directions to address 13 categories of online harms. For a start, the OSC will focus on addressing the first five harms, which are most prevalent and severe: online harassment (including sexual harassment), intimate image abuse, image-based child abuse, doxxing and online stalking. The remaining harms will follow progressively.

OSC may issue directions to take down the harmful content, to restrict the perpetrator’s online account, or to allow the victim to post a reply. These directions may be issued to communicators of online harm, administrators of groups or pages where online harm occurred, and platforms.  

Victims are at the very heart of OSC’s mission.  The OSC’s operational model and its oversight process are designed to be reasonable and fair,  while balancing against the need to act swiftly and reducing re-traumatisation.

2. Introduction of Statutory Torts

OSRA will introduce statutory torts, which allow victims to commence legal proceedings against those responsible for causing or failing to act against online harms.

These torts clarify the duties that users, administrators of groups, and platforms owe to one another and motivate all actors in the online space to act responsibly

3. Support Victims in Identifying Wrongdoers

OSRA will provide victims with a means to identify the person who caused the harm. The OSC can require platforms to take reasonable steps to provide specified information that may identify users suspected of committing online harms, such as collecting names or verified contact details.

These powers focus only on suspected users. The OSC can disclose the identity information of the perpetrators to the victims or their authorised representatives to bring a claim and/or safeguard themselves from the perpetrators.

The Next Bound for Online Safety

With OSRA, new building blocks are being created for citizens’ online interactions, to foster trust in online spaces where Singaporeans feel they can participate safely and confidently.

The Government will continue to work with all stakeholders – from tech companies to community partners – in setting up the OSC and its implementation.