On April 23, 2022, Europe reached an agreement regarding the Digital Services Act (DSA). A text in particular supposed to better protect European consumers against the digital giants.
The rumor simmered at the end of last week, it is official today. On the night of Friday to Saturday, the Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached a provisional political agreement on the legislation on digital services, better known by its English name, Digital Services Act (DSA). With the Digital Markets Legislation (DMA), the DSA will set new standards for the coming years to frame the digital space, as well as the conditions of competition for businesses. The DSA thus updates the e-commerce directive, which is already 20 years old and was conceived when the Web giants were still harmless.
Fight against the digital Far West
The text particularly targets social networks, and more generally sites with more than 45 million active users within the EU. The European authorities, for example, intend to respond quickly to illegal content published online by offering “a clearer notice and action procedure, which will allow users to report illegal content online and force online platforms to react quickly”. Victims of cyberviolence could also be better protected, in particular against the non-consensual sharing of intimate content alias revenge pornwith immediate withdrawals.
In addition, the European Commission evokes the possibility for the Member States to have access to the algorithms of the very large online platforms, which risks giving rise to sacred battles. Online misinformation is also at the heart of the project, a topic recently broached by Barack Obama in front of Stanford students. The platforms will be audited once a year by independent bodies under the supervision of the European Commission, and fines of up to 6% of their turnover in the event of repeated infringements may be imposed.
“This agreement is historic”welcomed the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, “Our new rules will protect users online, ensure freedom of expression and opportunities for businesses”. “With DSA, the days of big online platforms behaving like they’re ‘too big to care’ are coming to an end”reacted Thierry Breton for his part.
A text that should apply from 2023
Remember that this text is one of the two parts of a major plan presented in December 2020 to the European authorities. The first part, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) or regulations on digital markets, tackles anti-competitive practices. About twenty rules have been enacted by Brussels: the prohibition to cross without their consent the personal data of users from several online services for the purposes of advertising targeting, the possibility of deleting applications pre-installed on computers or smartphones, the obligation to ensure the portability of data and the interoperability of messaging services, or even the prohibition to promote its own services in the results of search engines.
The DSA still needs to be “technically finalized and verified by lawyer-linguists” before Parliament and the Council give their formal agreement. It will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU, and the rules will start applying 15 months later.