Fully applicable as of 17 February 2024
Today marks a new era for online intermediaries and platforms offering their services in the EU. The DSA is now fully in force, setting new standards for preventing and tackling illegal and harmful online activities and ensuring more transparency and accountability for users and businesses.
The DSA applies to a wide range of online services, such as marketplaces, social networks, content-sharing platforms, app stores, and online travel and accommodation platforms. On 25 August 2023, the DSA already came into effect for very large online platforms and very large online search engines.
The DSA introduces new obligations and responsibilities that have a big impact on the day-to-day processes, systems and interfaces of intermediaries and platforms, such as:
Enabling users to easily report illegal content, services, or goods and providing clear and effective mechanisms for content moderation (content removal or account access limitation decisions) and dispute resolution.
Publishing regular and detailed transparency reports on how they handle illegal and harmful content, using the DSA Transparency Database.
Being transparent about the methods of online advertising, including ranking and personalization, and giving users more control and opt-outs.
Protecting minors from inappropriate and harmful content and ads, and ensuring they have adequate privacy and security settings.
Verifying the identity and liability of sellers on online marketplaces and informing users about the origin and quality of the goods and services they buy.
The DSA is one of the most ambitious and comprehensive acts of the European Commission (EC) for the digital sector. It also interacts with other new and existing laws and regulations, such as the DMA, AI Act, Data Act, DAC7, ViDA, and CESOP, creating a complex and dynamic legal landscape for online services.
We have already learned that the implementation of the DSA poses significant challenges and opportunities for online services.
It requires an integrated, risk-based, and compliance-oriented approach that involves many internal (e.g. Legal/Compliance, IT, engineering and operations) and external (EC, the Digital Board and Digital Service Coordinators) stakeholders.
It also affects the user experience. This requires thoughtful design choices that align with the core values and ambitions of companies.
Content Compliance within the DSA has a lot of definitions that are open to interpretation. Companies should err on the side of caution and aim for reducing false negatives more than false positives.
And it entails hefty fines and sanctions for non-compliance or delay, up to 6% of the annual global turnover, 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover for each day of delay and temporary suspension of the service.
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