The European Parliament has just approved by vote the adoption of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Both proposals will transform the European market, which becomes the first jurisdiction in the world to establish rules to regulate the digital market.
The main objectives of the DSA and the DMA are the following, respectively:
- Protect the fundamental rights of all citizens of the European Union in the digital space.
- Establish a fair market that offers all participants the possibility to innovate, grow and compete inside and outside the EU.
The measures collected in the DSA are intended to protect the privacy of its users, increase the transparency of social network algorithms, and protect minors. “What is illegal offline will be illegal online too,” said Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.
The European Union will know how the Facebook or TikTok algorithm works
Both the European Union and all the member states will have the possibility of supervising both the operation of the algorithms of the large social networks and the content that is disseminated on them.
Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, who has been responsible for both proposals, says that it is essential to be able to access the “black boxes” (the algorithms) of the big social networks. “It will allow us to access the information we need to ensure that the platforms are complying with the rules,” he said in his Blog. “Likewise, authorized researchers will have access to the data to carry out research that supports our control tasks.”
Meta or Google will have to justify why they recommend content to their users that may polarize their opinion or misinform them. Its studies will not suffice, but the EC will audit it and assess whether it produces a negative impact on citizens. Also, any large social network or service that employs a content recommendation system or sorts content by user preferences must in turn offer an option that does not take into account their preferences. That is to say: Instagram, Twitter or TikTok will have to allow their users to disconnect from any algorithm that orders, shows or hides content based on the preferences obtained through the use of the service. How will TikTok work if it doesn’t show what it thinks the user might like?
It will be forbidden for the different platforms to try to manipulate the decisions of their users with “dark tactics” within their services, such as using one button larger than another as it suits the company when granting permissions to process their data. At the same time, It will be mandatory that the service cancellation process be as fast and simple as the subscription process.
Finally, any platform accessible to minors must offer a special place without targeted advertising of any kind for them. It will not be allowed to collect any information about the minor’s usage preferences to create an advertising profile of the minor.
Europe will be a headache for the big Internet companies
The vote in favor of these regulations turns Europe into a single market of 450 million users where the big platforms will be monitored and where they will not be able to continue operating as before. these sThey will be applied directly anywhere in Europe in a centralized way for the big platformsthe big marketplaces and the big search engines like Google.
All platforms, regardless of their size, will have to have a legal representative in Europe. Each Member State will have regulators with enough power to enforce the rules in their market.
The measures will come into force on January 1, 2024, and the affected companies are the ones that will finance their execution. Under the DSA, the Commission will be able to apply monitoring fees to very large platforms and search engines to cover the costs of monitoring.
And the fines will be heavy. Violate any point of the DSA will entail a fine of up to 6% of the company’s global income, and the repetition could suppose the prohibition to operate in the European territory. It is something that Breton stressed to Elon Musk after buying Twitter: “If you want Twitter to work in Europe, you will abide by our rules.”
Europe will not be like the United States, where companies like Twitter are protected by the First Amendment and section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. There they are treated as simple intermediaries, but in Europe they will be responsible for the content uploaded by their users and how it is distributed.
DSA: Europe may censor content to “protect citizens”
The DSA holds social networks directly responsible for illegal content that some of their users may share, promoting dangerous products, inciting violence, promoting hate speech or misinformation. “You may not be guilty, but you are responsible,” says Breton.
In addition, it provides the Commission the possibility of censoring information in specific cases without the judges previously determining whether that content is illegall. It is a response mechanism to certain crises that would be implemented for three months if the Commission deems it appropriate. An example is cited in the context of the Russian aggression in Ukraine and the measure taken to ban the dissemination of propaganda by Russian state media within the member states.