In between illegal and harmful: a look at the Community Guidelines and Terms of Use of online platforms in the light of the DSA proposal and the fundamental right to freedom of expression (Part 1 of 3)

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By Britt van den Branden, Sophie Davidse and Eva Smit*   This blogpost is part one of three. Blogposts 2 and 3 will follow soon. Just before last year’s Christmas day, the European Commission published a proposal for a Digital Services Act (DSA). The proposal introduces a new range of harmonised obligations for digital services […]

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The Digital Services Act and Its Impact on the Right to Freedom of Expression: Special Focus on Risk Mitigation Obligations

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Joan Barata This blog post synthesises the main arguments and conclusions developed in a report commissioned to the author by the Plataforma en Defensa de la Libertad de Información (PDLI), fully available here.   Introduction The UN Human Rights Council declared in its resolution 32/13 of 1 July 2016 that “(…) the same rights that […]

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Online advertising: These three policy ideas could stop tech amplifying hate

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    By Catherine Armitage, Johnny Ryan and Ilaria Buri The relationship between the spread of harmful content and the business models that fund it is a preoccupation for many policymakers today. Political momentum is building around the idea that banning ‘surveillance advertising’ could be the answer. This has translated into a variety of different […]

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AWO overview of all ongoing policy proposals to reform online advertising

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AWO data rights agency put together an overview of all the proposals related to online advertising in the DSA, DMA and other legislation. The overview is an invaluable source to follow the latest developments on the discussion concerning the regulation of online advertising and ad-funded business models, currently taking place in Europe and the US. […]

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Article 12 DSA: Will platforms be required to apply EU fundamental rights in content moderation decisions?

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  By Naomi Appelman, João Pedro Quintais, and Ronan Fahy, Institute for Information Law (IViR)   As the European Court of Human Rights has emphasised, online platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, provide an “unprecedented” means for exercising freedom of expression online. Unfortunately, however, the systems operated by platforms, where (automated) decisions are taken […]

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Platform ad archives in Article 30 DSA

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by Paddy Leerssen, Institute for Information Law (IViR) Tucked away in the depths of the new DSA draft, Article 30 carries a title only an academic could love: ‘Additional online advertising transparency’. Please bear with me, because I want to argue that it represents a significant shift in the governance of online advertising. I’ll first […]

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The Interplay between the Digital Services Act and Sector Regulation: How Special is Copyright?

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João Pedro Quintais (University of Amsterdam; Institute for Information Law, IViR) and Sebastian Felix Schwemer (University of Copenhagen; Centre for Information and Innovation Law, CIIR; University of Oslo, Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law, NRCCL) explore in a new paper how the Digital Services Act’s rules interact with existing sector-specific lex specialis rules. In […]

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Effectiveness of Political Ad Disclosure Labels and the DSA proposal

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Natali Helberger, Tom Dobber and Sanne Kruikemeier, together with Ellen Goodman and Sophie Minihold, tested the effectiveness of political ad disclosure labels. Online political advertisements are often opaque with respect to targeting and sponsorship. Citizens may not know that they are seeing a targeted political advertisement, that they were personally targeted, that the audience may […]

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News Recommenders in the DSA – Commentary on Internet Policy Review

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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 […]

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