The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) came into effect in November 2022, but large tech companies were provided a few months to get to grips with the new landmark law. From today, they will have to comply with regulations meant to moderate hate speech, disinformation, and online safety across the internet.

A landmark internet-regulatory act, the DSA is set to provide further protections to internet users concerning harmful content, data protection, personalised and targeted advertising, and particular rules for underage users.

The law is staggered in it’s strictness – larger online platforms will have to comply with more stringent regulations to provide further protections to users, or face larger fines.

In April 2023, the EU released the list of what it deemed to classify is ‘large platforms’ – those with around 45 million active users per month, or 10% of the EU population – including: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Wikipedia, Booking.com, Amazon Store, Goole Play, Maps and Shopping, Alibaba and AliExpress, Zlandao, Pintrest, and X (former known as Twitter). The Google and Bing search engines will also have to comply with the tougher rules.

From this announcement, tech companies had four months to comply with the rules before they would face review and potential fines – breaches could result in a penalty of 6% of their yearly turnover, and even a suspension of their services in the EU.

Large online platforms will have to comply with a number of extra requirements as specified under the DSA, meaning they must identify, analyse, and assess systemic risks that are linked to their services. These include risks related to:

• Illegal content.
• Fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression, media freedom and pluralism, discrimination, consumer protection and children’s rights.
• Public security and electoral processes.
• Gender-based violence, public health, protection of minors, and mental and physical wellbeing.

After identifying the risks, the large companies will be obliged to put into place measures to mitigate them. These include being audited independently to ensure their compliance, sharing data with the European Commission, and allow researchers to access platform data for studies concerning systemic risks in the EU.

Further to the risk mitigations outlined but the DSA surrounding recommender systems and advertising, which are often key components of social media platform business models.

The EU is asking these companies to provide an option in their recommender systems that is not based on user profiling. This essentially means companies would have to let users opt-out of algorithmic recommendations based on their behaviour.

Platforms will also have to provide a publicly available repository of advertisements they allow on their site.

They would also have to identify how their algorithms are used to recommend content to users so the EU could then identify if this is exacerbating biases, hate speech, or threats.

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A number of tech companies underwent stress-tests earlier this summer to see if their compliance efforts were enough, to varying reviews from EU regulators.

TikTok, despite its moves to stop underaged users from being shown personalised advertising, was told in July by EU regulators that their efforts were simply not enough to comply with the full set of regulations.

Similarly, X, formerly known as Twitter, was found to need further improvement in July by EU regulator Thierry Breton.

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, have provided European users the ability to view content such a Reels and Stories in chronological order from people they follow, rather than from recommended pages and users.

Snapchat has also put in new rules restricting the use of personalised advertising for children, and is creating a repository of available advertisements.

Wikipedia has also said they have made some changes, and supports the EU’s approach to online regulations over the UK’s highly contested Online Safety Bill, which plans on putting age restrictions on certain content.

However, not all of the designated large companies are working on compliance – Amazon and Zalando, both retailers, are attempting to change their designation claiming they are not large enough platforms and that as retailers, some of the stipulations should not comply.