By John Albert and Paddy Leerssen, DSA Observatory
Drawing on a March 2025 workshop hosted by the DSA Observatory, this post shares practical and strategic insights from researchers preparing to make use of Article 40(4), from scoping proposals and navigating compliance to building collective support structures.
By Alissa Cooper and Peter Chapman, Knight-Georgetown Institute
The Digital Services Act sets out broad new legal requirements to make recommender systems more transparent and accountable, including for their role in systemic risks. To fulfill that promise, implementation must go beyond basic disclosures and defaults; it must shape how these systems are designed and assessed over time. A new report from the Knight-Georgetown Institute and its accompanying EU Policy Brief offer a practical roadmap for putting these goals into action — and putting people first.
By John Albert, DSA Observatory
Despite claims that it is “institutionalizing censorship,” the DSA is designed to protect fundamental rights, including freedom of expression. One key example is its provision allowing EU users to challenge platforms’ content moderation decisions through out-of-court dispute settlement (ODS) proceedings—a topic explored in depth at a recent workshop hosted by the DSA Observatory and the Article 21 Academic Advisory Board.
By John Albert, DSA Observatory
On December 17th, the Commission opened formal proceedings against TikTok to investigate whether the platform diligently managed electoral risks in the Romanian context. This case demonstrates two gears of regulatory action under the DSA: the slow, methodical pace of analyzing systemic risks and setting standards, and the fast, politically charged scramble to respond to high-profile crises.
By John Albert, DSA Observatory
Recently published risk assessment reports may offer new insights into how the largest online platforms think about and manage risks. But the first rollout has already raised questions about publication timelines, redactions, and formats. This post aims to clarify some of these ambiguities, and points toward upcoming regulatory guidance on risk assessments and opportunities for stakeholder engagement.
By John Albert, DSA Observatory
This post shares insights from a DSA Observatory workshop held on 18 November 2024, where researchers and legal experts met to discuss what’s new in the draft delegated act, what’s missing, and how to approach the Commission’s call for feedback.
By Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon, Co-director of the Brussels Privacy Hub, LSTS, VUB
Despite its obvious merits, it remains unclear whether the Commission’s draft delegated act on access to platform data strikes the right balance between data providers’ commercial interests and the public interest. This contribution highlights three points from the draft with recommendations to help preserve researcher autonomy.
Magdalena Jóźwiak, Researcher, DSA Observatory, University of Amsterdam
By the end of November 2024, the VLOPs and VLOSEs first designated by the Commission on 25 April 2023, are expected to publish their risk assessment reports, providing long-awaited insights into this crucial due diligence mechanism introduced by the DSA. This post offers an overview of the information that platforms are expected to make publicly available in the coming days and examines the main activities undertaken so far by the Commission to enforce and supervise the DSA’s risk management framework.
Urbano Reviglio (1) and Matteo Fabbri (2)
(1) Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, European University Institute, Fiesole
(2) IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy
In this contribution, we offer a critical overview of the interplay between the DSA requirements on the transparency and user controls for recommender systems and the design features that may be operationalized to comply with them.
by Valerie Bourjeily, Advanced LLM candidate in Technology Governance, University of Amsterdam, Law School Academic Excellence Track (ACeT) Research Intern, ’24
The DSA aims to help researchers in understanding platform content moderation. This blog post discusses its relevance in researching the systemic censorship of pro-Palestinian content, and content moderation practices more generally.