EU: Due diligence obligations in the proposed Digital Services Act
Summary
This briefing is part of a series published by ARTICLE 19 on key elements of the EU Digital Services Act.
ARTICLE 19 has serious concerns about the proposals contained in Articles 26 and 27 of the proposed EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which set out due diligence obligations for online platforms. Due diligence obligations are essential to ensure potential risks to users’ human rights, including the right to freedom of expression, are identified and addressed. However, the current proposals are vague and fail to set strong enough rights protections. The European Parliament should seek to urgently clarify the provisions, as well as mandating human rights impacts assessments and greater transparency from companies to enable the better protection of human rights online.
The European Commission is defending its plans to tackle online disinformation from criticism from national governments, according to a working paper leaked to EURACTIV.
The European Union should prohibit targeted advertising as part of new rules against Big Tech platforms in the bloc’s Digital Services Act, the EU’s institutional data protection watchdog has said.
The recommendation comes as part of an opinion from the EU data protection supervisor (EDPS) on the European Commission’s proposals for the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which the EDPS released on Wednesday (10 February).
The Commission’s December proposal for a Digital Services Act pitched the idea of greater transparency obligations for platforms in the field of targeted advertising, amongst other requirements in the field of content regulation. Penalties for violations of the rules include fines of up to 6% of a company’s annual income.
Online platform giants will be forced to abide by a broad range of obligations as part of ambitious new plans laid out by the European Commission in its Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA) on Tuesday (15 December).
The DMA proposals will see so-called ‘gatekeeper platforms’ prohibited from engaging in practices deemed to be of detriment to “contestability and fairness” in online markets.
Fines for non-compliance with the rules have been pitched at a maximum of 10% of a company’s annual worldwide turnover.
Platforms that engage in “systematic non-compliance” of the rules could come in for other remedies, including behavioral orders but also “last resort” options of divestments or breakups. However, the latter options are unlikely since those tools are already available in the Commission’s arsenal of antitrust capacities.
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Awaited with bated breath by stakeholders in the online industry and by IP right holders alike, the EU Commission published its official draft for the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA is conceived as one of the central pillars for its ambition to shape Europe’s digital future. Its published draft aims high, both in the scope of topics it covers, and the depth in which it addresses them. The DSA provides a staggered set of obligations and liability rules for all intermediaries (such as internet access providers, domain name registrars, search engines), for hosting services (such as cloud services and webhosting), for online platforms (such as social media platforms, app stores and online marketplaces), and for very large online platforms (those reaching more than 45 million EU users each month). In this article, we will walk you through the proposed changes and what they mean for platforms in particular.