More than an advisory group: why The European Board for Digital Services has key roles in DSA enforcement

Julian Jaursch Two days after the Digital Services Act (DSA) became applicable in its entirety across the EU, a new group of regulators introduced by the DSA met for the first time: On February 19, 2024, the European Board for Digital Services (“the Board”) had its inaugural meeting in Brussels. While it is billed merely […]

Practical Considerations for Out-of-Court Dispute Settlement (ODS) under Article 21 of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA)

Thomas Hughes Thomas Hughes is the Director of the Oversight Board Administration. This article is written in a personal capacity and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Oversight Board.   Out-of-court dispute settlement bodies (ODS) have the potential to be an important pillar of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). As proposed in […]

Report on Expert Workshop – Navigating the DSA’s procedural turn: lessons from consumer law for ODR

Expert workshop 1 December 2023, 14:00 – 17:30 (CET), University of Amsterdam   Written by Kirsten Meiring, Anna van Duin & Paddy Leerssen Introduction On 1 December 2023, the DSA Observatory’s Anna van Duin and Paddy Leerssen organised an expert workshop on out-of-court dispute settlement (ODS) under Article 21 of the DSA. This report provides […]

Consumer ODR – Redefining pathways to dispute settlement in a post-consumer society

Vanessa Mak   On 1 December 2023, Anna van Duin and Paddy Leerssen organized an expert workshop at the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law (IViR) to discuss consumer dispute resolution in light of the new rules for online dispute resolution (ODR) laid down in Art. 20 and 21 of the Digital Services Act […]

DSA Audits: Procedural Rules Leave Some Uncertainties

Anna Morandini (PhD candidate at the European University Institute)   Auditors hold significant power in reviewing the DSA compliance of very large online platforms and search engines (‘VLOPs’ and ‘VLOSEs’). Their role includes evaluating platform policies on systemic risk management. In October, the Commission adopted the delegated regulation on the performance of DSA audits (‘DRA’) […]

The extraterritorial implications of the Digital Services Act

Laureline Lemoine & Mathias Vermeulen (AWO)   As the enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA) is gathering speed, a number of non-EU based civil society and research organizations have wondered to what extent the DSA can have an impact on their work. This blog post provides a concise overview of the areas and provisions […]

Research Report on Disparate Content Moderation

Naomi Appelman (Institute for Information Law, IViR – University of Amsterdam) We know that content moderation harms such as unjustified removals, shadowbans or blocks are not distributed equally. Time and again research and civil society reports show how social marginalisation is reproduced online (see for example: here, here, and here). And unfortunately, platform regulation coming […]

The Out-of-court Settlement Mechanism under the DSA: Questions and Doubts

 Joan Barata Senior Legal Fellow, Future of Free Speech (Justitia) Introduction The Digital Services Act (DSA) constitutes the new legal horizontal framework in the EU regarding the provision of online services. It formally came into force on 16 November 2022. However, a significant number of rules and obligations included in this Regulation will become enforceable […]

The Digital Services Act as seen from the European Periphery

  Jenny Orlando-Salling[1] (PhD Fellow in Law at iCourts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) & Louisa Bartolo [2],[3] (PhD Candidate at the Queensland University of Technology Digital Media Research Centre, Australia, and a student member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society) The ‘European Union’ is an idea that […]

Twitter’s retreat from the Code of Practice on Disinformation raises a crucial question: are DSA codes of conduct really voluntary?

    Carl Vander Maelen (Ghent University, Faculty of Law and Criminology) and Rachel Griffin (Sciences Po Law School) The chronicle of a retreat foretold has come to pass. Following months of rumours about Twitter’s willingness or capacities to comply with EU tech regulation after its new owner Elon Musk fired most of the company’s […]