EU Content Moderation Rules May Soon Apply to Big Tech

EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Monday that a deal between EU governments and EU parliamentarians on the Digital Services Act (DSA) might be reached next month, according to Reuters. Vestager proposed the DSA just over a year ago, and it requires digital firms to do more to combat unlawful content or face fines of up to 6% of their global revenue. EU governments and legislators are currently debating the finer points: what constitutes an online marketplace subject to the laws and what criteria should be used to prohibit targeted advertising. 

The European Commission proposed the DSA in late 2020 to address issues such as the selling of counterfeit goods, the dissemination of hate speech, misinformation and market domination. The main premise of the proposition is that what is prohibited in the real world should also be illegal online. The DSA’s goal is to make the internet a safer place once it is implemented. According to the European Commission, users will be able to have a say in what they view online thanks to the DSA. It will, for example, restrict targeted advertisements and require platforms to remove dangerous and/or illegal information. If platforms do not remove the content flagged as illegal in due time, they could be sanctioned.  

Hundreds of millions of Europeans utilize platforms and online intermediaries daily, so the new rule will have a substantial impact for them. Users will be able to report illegal content, and the platform will be required to inform them of any decisions made. Regarding personalized advertising, large internet platforms will be subject to strict rules that allow consumers to opt out of personalized material. The DSA will also enable users to contact social media businesses if their accounts are suspended, for example. Notably, if a company is headquartered outside of the EU and provides services in the single market, the act will apply to them as well.  

Large internet platforms and social media platforms will be given special attention. They will have far-reaching transparency obligations regarding the measures they are putting in place to identify and remove illegal information.   

EU institutions expect the DSA to be approved before the summer, and implementation could start as early as autumn. According to the first draft of the regulation, the new regulation would apply three months after it is approved. 

UK Introduced Similar Rules 

The U.K. government introduced in Parliament in early March a new Online Safety Bill that will also impose obligations on companies to identify and remove illegal and harmful content from their platforms. Unlike the EU, the U.K. went a step, further requiring companies to remove “legal but harmful” content from their platforms. At the last minute, the U.K. government also added in the possibility for tech executives to face jail time if they fail to comply with request from the regulator.  

Read More: UK’s Online Safety Bill Comes With Possible Jail Time for Violators 

As the DSA is still under negotiation, EU lawmakers may still add changes and raise the bar for content moderation. However, EU lawmakers won’t be able to add criminal sanctions to the DSA because those would fall under the member states’ jurisdiction. 

Days After DMA 

Last week, Vestager received approval from EU governments and legislators for her other major proposal, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which lays out a list of dos and don’ts for companies classified as online gatekeepers (i.e., those that control access to and data on their platforms) and gives them six months to comply. Businesses, however, argue that this is insufficient time to design compliance plans and programs for such complicated legislation. 

There will be no extension, according to Vestager, because corporations are aware of what constitutes anti-competitive behavior. “We in our work and the companies should be very happy that we have six months because it was one of the things that were intensively discussed during the negotiations … since both the prohibitions and the obligations are things that come from established case law, I don’t think any of them are sort of big surprises,” said Vestager to Reuters. 

Read More: 8 Things Tech Firms Should Know About EU’s Digital Markets Act