Disinformation, hate speech, falsifications… The huge online platforms, such as Facebook or Amazon, will have to apply “around the summer of 2023” the new European Union (EU) legislation that comes into force this Wednesday, November 16. and whose objective is to eliminate areas of lawlessness on the Internet.
The Digital Services Act (DSA), a landmark regulation introduced by the European Commission in December 2020 and validated in early July by the European Parliament, imposes a long list of rules on social media, marketplaces, and search engines.
Protect platform users
These rules include the obligation to act “without delay” to remove any illegal content as soon as the platform becomes aware of it, or the obligation to inform the judicial authorities when they suspect a “serious crime”. They also include prohibitions, such as those on the use of “sensitive” user data (gender, political leaning, religious affiliation, etc.) for targeted advertising. And transparency obligations, such as the publication of the main parameters used by recommender systems.
The more binding supplementary rules will apply only to “very large” online platforms, with more than 45 million active users in the EU. This potentially affects about twenty companies, including Google (and its subsidiary YouTube), Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Amazon, Microsoft (and its social network LinkedIn), Apple, as well as Twitter, and possibly also TikTok, Zalando or Booking . booking platform
The European Commission intends to monitor
The Commission will publish the list next year based on the user data that must be communicated by these platforms before February 17. These companies must be in compliance four months after the publication of the list, that is, “towards the end of the summer of 2023”, specified European officials.
These “very large” platforms will need to assess for themselves the risks associated with the use of their services and will need to implement means to mitigate them, such as content moderation. They must also provide the regulator with access to their data and will be audited once a year, at their expense, by independent bodies.
These big players will be placed directly under the supervision of the European Commission, which can impose fines of up to 6% of their worldwide turnover, or even a ban from operating in the EU in case of repeated serious infringements. The DSA complements the Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulation that addresses anti-competitive practices by tech giants and came into force on November 1.
Source: BFM TV
