ARTICLES / ANALYSIS

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 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

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 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.

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 Paddy Leerssen, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam 6 August 2024 Social media platforms are integrating generative AI features into their services. This post discusses how these features trigger overlapping obligations under the AI Act and the Digital Services Act.     On 26 September 2024, Instagram and Facebook rolled out a new […]

by Rachel Griffin, doctoral candidate at SciencesPo 31 July 2024   What are the implications of framing normative and political questions about platform governance in terms of ‘risks’ to be managed through technocratic expertise? This article suggests that the DSA’s system of risk management obligations for the largest platforms ignores the essentially political and contestable […]

Beatriz Botero Arcila Assistant Professor of Law at Sciences Po Law School & Faculty Associate, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University   Early in April the European Court of Justice delivered an important decision regarding the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA).[1]  Affirming the DSA’s objective of enhancing transparency and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

    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 […]

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, […]

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.

In this blog post, Doris Buijs and Ilaria Buri look into the two crisis provisions in the DSA based on which platforms must adopt certain crisis mitigation measures. What do they entail and what can be expected of those provisions in times of multiple and systemic crises?

DSA Observatory – IViR’s researchers João Pedro Quintais, Naomi Appelman and Ronan Fahy published a new article “Using Terms and Conditions to Apply Fundamental Rights to Content Moderation” (forthcoming in German Law Journal). In this article, they critically explore questions around the enforceability of fundamental rights via T&Cs through the prism of Article 14 DSA. […]

The European Commission has clarified its focus for implementing the DSA. The Commission will first work on implementing procedural regulation and delivering delegated acts on the supervisory fees and independent external audits. Four other implementing and delegated acts and five guidance documents will take a lower priority. Pim ten Thije provides a handy overview of the focus areas and other acts and guidelines to come.

The Digital Services Act designates VLOPs and VLOSEs based on their number of ‘average monthly active recipients’. How can and should online platforms calculate their number of ‘AMARs’? What role will embedded content and auto-completed search results play? And will the discounting of bots, scrapers and ‘double’ visitors lead to extra tracking of platforms’ recipients? This blog dives deep into the concept of average monthly active recipients.

This blog post looks into the implications of the DSA on the media, in specific: protection of journalistic and media content under the DSA. What (procedural) rights can be used by journalists to protect their content online? And what are the platforms’ obligations to protect media freedom and freedom of expression?

Prof. Natali Helberger published a blog post on the Media@LSE blog titled: How Council of Europe guidelines on managing the impact of digital technologies on freedom of expression complement the DSA. Read on for a short introduction and more.

Prof. Natali Helberger, a contributor to the DSA Observatory and Prof. Wolfgang Schulz of the Hans-Bredow Institute, Hamburg published a blog post on the Media@LSE blog titled: Understandable, but still wrong: How freedom of communication suffers in the zeal for sanctions. The authors discuss the ban of Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik by the Council […]

DSA Observatory’s Joris van Hoboken wrote a new essay for the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), “European Lessons in Self-Experimentation: From the GDPR to European Platform Regulation”. The essay is part of The Four Domains of Global Platform Governance, an essay series that examines platform governance from four distinct policy angles: content, data, competition […]

Bengi Zeybek, Joris van Hoboken and Ilaria Buri (Institute for Information Law, IViR – University of Amsterdam)   Introduction  Platforms’ content moderation decisions affect individual users and society at large in various ways. Content may be unduly removed or accounts may be suspended arbitrarily; politicians and influencers may be deplatformed, or artists may be shadowbanned. […]

Report on the DSA Observatory & IViR expert roundtable of 18 March 2022 Ilaria Buri, Isabel Lereno Monteiro Guedes and Lucas Balluff   In reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on March 1st 2022, the Council of the EU passed a series of measures targeting the dissemination of Russian media outlets Russia Today (RT) […]

Melinda Rucz (Institute for Information Law, IViR – University of Amsterdam) Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on an outdated version of the DSA draft proposal. The DSA’s final text, which can be here, differs in numerous ways including a revised numbering […]

Ilaria Buri (Institute for Information Law, IViR, University of Amsterdam) Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on an outdated version of the DSA draft proposal. The DSA’s final text, which can be here, differs in numerous ways including a revised numbering for […]

Ilaria Buri and Joris van Hoboken Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on an outdated version of the DSA draft proposal. The DSA’s final text, which can be here, differs in numerous ways including a revised numbering for many of its articles. […]

Ilaria Buri (Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam) Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on an outdated version of the DSA draft proposal. The DSA’s final text, which can be here, differs in numerous ways including a revised numbering for many […]

By Britt van den Branden, Sophie Davidse and Eva Smit* This blog is the third and final part. See blog 1 here and blog 2 here. Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on an outdated version of the DSA draft proposal. The […]

Lidia Dutkiewicz, Jan Czarnocki (Center for IT and IP law – CiTiP, KU Leuven) Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on an outdated version of the DSA draft proposal. The DSA’s final text, which can be here, differs in numerous ways including […]

Joris van Hoboken (Institute for Information Law, IViR – University of Amsterdam) Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on an outdated version of the DSA draft proposal. The DSA’s final text, which can be here, differs in numerous ways including a revised […]

Bengi Zeybek*   Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on anoutdated version of the DSA draft proposal. The DSA’s final text, which can be here, differs in numerous ways including a revised numbering for many of its articles. Introduction Given the size […]

In September 2021, the Verfassungsblog and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition co-hosted an online symposium, “To Break Up or Regulate Big Tech? Avenues to Constrain Private Power in the DSA/DMA Package”. “The concentration of private power in the digital realm is not tenable – on this there is consensus. It extends across […]

By Britt van den Branden, Sophie Davidse and Eva Smit*   This blog is part two of three. See part 1 here. Part 3 will follow soon. In part one of this blog series, we showed that the Community Guidelines and Terms of Use (hereafter: CG and ToU) of six well known very large online […]

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. Disclaimer: Dear reader, please note that this commentary was published before the DSA was finalised and is therefore based on anoutdated version […]

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. […]