News Recommenders in the DSA – Commentary on Internet Policy Review

Uva researchers Natali Helberger, Max van Drunen, Sanne Vrijenhoek and Judith Möller wrote a commentary on the Internet Policy Review on “Regulation of news recommenders in the Digital Services Act: empowering David against the Very Large Online Goliath”.

Nowadays it is difficult to imagine the online world without recommendation algorithms. They filter and classify the growing abundance of information, prioritising content according to predefined ranking criteria. The result of that process is a recommendation to users on what content best matches their interests or personal profile. We encounter recommendation algorithms on a daily basis. They suggest products and services on e-commerce websites such as Amazon, help finding the love of your life on a dating platform, help you discover music and films on services such as Spotify or Netflix, give personalised recommendations on news websites, and match you with content on social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. As such, recommender algorithms are the engines behind the internet’s knowledge infrastructure.

Because of their importance … [ read more ]