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

Reclaiming the Algorithm: A call for social media interoperability

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By Katarzyna Szymielewicz, Panoptykon

This piece is the second in a two-part series on reforming recommender systems for the public good. It examines social media interoperability as an ambitious policy objective that could open the market to competing public-interest algorithms, and outlines regulatory pathways for achieving this— not only through the Digital Services Act (DSA), but also the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Fairness Act (DFA).  

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Who speaks and who is heard? Civil society participation and participatory justice in DSA systemic risk management

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By Mateus Correia de Carvalho (PhD researcher, EUI) and Rachel Griffin (postdoctoral researcher, Duisburg-Essen University)

This post presents the report ‘Who speaks and who is heard?’ on civil society participation and participatory justice in DSA systemic risk management. In it, we examine the early practice of DSA participation to understand how it is unfolding in practice. Drawing on a qualitative empirical study with civil society actors of diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and activities, we traced the mechanisms used by those actors, their perceptions about the usefulness of different spaces of participation, the strategic considerations determining when, where, whether, and how to participate, as well as the obstacles and inequalities hampering meaningful participation. Regarding these inequalities, we propose to understand them as a matter of participatory justice, making some recommendations to improve the overall inclusiveness of DSA participation in systemic risk management. 

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Reclaiming the Algorithm: What the DSA can—and can’t—fix about recommender systems

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By Katarzyna Szymielewicz, Panoptykon

This piece is the first in a two-part series on reforming recommender systems for democratic resilience and the public good. It examines how the DSA can be used to push platforms toward algorithms that better serve the public interest—through systemic-risk mitigation, design obligations, and enforcement—and what meaningful recommender-system interventions could look like in practice.

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The Missing Metrics in DSA Content Moderation Transparency

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By Max Davy, Oxford Internet Institute

The Digital Services Act makes platform transparency reporting mandatory and standardised, but the metrics it requires still fall short of what is needed for real accountability. Counts of removals and appeals alone cannot tell us whether content moderation systems are accurate, proportionate, or effective, making the absence of evaluation metrics such as precision and recall increasingly difficult to justify under the DSA’s risk-based logic. While these metrics are unlikely to surface in baseline transparency reports under Articles 15 and 24, the post argues they may yet emerge through heightened scrutiny of the largest online platforms and search engines (VLOPSEs), as regulatory expectations take shape through enforcement, systemic risk reporting, audits, and related obligations.

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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.

23 February 2023 – Expert workshop on “Online journalism: Digital Services Act & Media Freedom Act”

February 20, 2023/by admin

24 November 2021 – Expert Workshop “Access to Justice and Content Moderation”

November 22, 2021/by admin

14 October 2021 – Expert Seminar “The DSA: Implications for Freedom of Expression”

October 10, 2021/by admin

30 June 2021 – “An Endless Odyssey? Content Moderation Without General Content Monitoring”

June 23, 2021/by admin
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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

2021-2026 © DSA Observatory