The Digital Services Act (DSA) Observatory

The Digital Services Act (DSA) Observatory is a new project run by the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam, which kicked-off in January 2021. The DSA Observatory acts as a hub of expertise with respect to the “Digital Services Act” package presented by the European Commission in December 2020.

The DSA Observatory provides independent scientific input during the DSA debate and to engage different stakeholders on the DSA proposals, in particular on the challenge of confronting platform power from a fundamental rights and democratic values perspective. To achieve these goals, the Observatory will bring together a broad network of platform regulation experts in academia and other relevant stakeholders, including civil society organisations, policymakers and regulators.

The DSA Observatory will closely follow the DSA process and generate regular outputs on relevant developments, including through dissemination activities, workshops and expert meetings.

NEWS

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ANALYSIS

Three key points on the Delegated Act: How to preserve researcher autonomy under Article 40 DSA?

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.

The wait is (almost) over! First risk assessment and audit reports – what will be published, when, and the way forward 

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.  

The Regulation of Recommender Systems Under the DSA: A Transition from Default to Multiple and Dynamic Controls?

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.

Researching content moderation through platform transparency rules: the DSA as a research tool to address pro-Palestinian content censorship

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.

EVENTS

The Digital Services Act Observatory at the Amsterdam Law School will be hosting events on a variety of topics which are relevant to the DSA discussion and process. Information on these events will be posted here.

Please get in touch if you would like to share your ideas for a DSA-related event or discuss your research at one of our events.

ABOUT

The DSA Observatory

The Digital Services Act (DSA) Observatory is a new project run by the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam, which kicked-off in January 2021. The DSA Observatory acts as a hub of expertise with respect to the “Digital Services Act” package presented by the European Commission in December 2020.

Project team

The core project team for the DSA Observatory is composed of prof. Joris van Hoboken, Ilaria Buri, Paddy Leerssen, dr. Ronan Fahy, prof. Natali Helberger, prof. Martin Senftleben, dr. João Pedro Quintais and Doris Bujis.

Funding and collaboration with the Digital Legal Lab

The DSA Observatory is part of the “Digital Transformations of Decision-Making” research initiative of the Amsterdam Law School and contributes to the activities of the Digital Legal Lab, an interuniversity research centre on law and digital technologies run by a research network between four Dutch universities: Tilburg University, the University of Amsterdam, Radboud University Nijmegen and Maastricht University. This joint research initiative, the Digital Legal Studies Sector Plan for legal research is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). The DSA Observatory was launched thanks to the funding of the Open Society Foundations.

CONTACT

The DSA Observatory team can be reached by email at:

j.v.j.vanhoboken@uva.nl or i.buri@uva.nl

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