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’) […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
On 23 February 2023, the DSA Observatory and the AI, Media and Democracy Lab organised an online workshop on online journalism and the role of online platforms. Several expert speakers discussed the Digital Services Act, (Article 17 of) the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), and the safety of journalists and protection of news media content […]
by Natali Helberger,* Max van Drunen, Ronan Fahy, Laurens Naudts, Stanislaw Piasecki, Theresa Seipp (all University of Amsterdam, Institute for Information Law (IViR)) In December last year, Twitter suspended without notification the accounts of several leading journalists for alleged violations of the terms of service through their reporting. The move was widely criticised by journalists, […]
Max van Drunen, Natali Helberger, Wolfgang Schulz, and Claes de Vreese The EU is set to complement the DSA with a new regulation on (targeted) political advertisements. In this piece we highlight how the regulation’s definition of political advertisements and enforcement mechanisms threaten freedom of expressio Right now, the exclamation above is just a title. […]
In this blogpost, Julian Jaursch explains why Digital Services Coordinators should establish strong research and data units. To detect and mitigate infringements of the Digital Services Act (DSA), member states’ Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs) need a deep understanding of how platforms work and what potential risks are associated with them. Considering also that the DSA contains a multitude of reports and databases to monitor and analyze, member states should equip their DSCs with research and data units that can develop knowledge on platform risks, conduct data analyses, participate in expert communities and support EU-level enforcement efforts.