EU legislation aims to make the internet as safe as possible for its users. To this end, on 23 April, the European Parliament and the Council agreed on new rules in this area, with the adoption of the Regulation on a Single Market for Digital Services, or simply the “Digital Services Act”, published in the Official Journal of the EU on 27 October 2022 and entering into force on 16 November 2022.
The Digital Services Act contains various rights and obligations affecting users, businesses and Member States. The new rules will have to be complied with, albeit to a different extent (e.g. micro and small businesses only proportionally to their capabilities and size) by: i) intermediary service providers (e.g. internet access); ii) hosting service providers (e.g. cloud infrastructure); iii) online platforms (e.g. online marketplaces); and iv) very large platforms reaching more than 10% of the 450 million consumers in the European Union.
The Digital Services Act includes, inter alia:
- new mechanisms to report illegal content, goods or services online, including the possibility for platforms to work with “trustworthy flaggers” who can help them identify and remove illegal content;
- the obligation of online providers to trace business users, for example, to help identify providers of illegal goods (pursuing the principle of Know Your Customer) and to make reasonable efforts to randomly check whether certain goods have been identified as being illegal in any of the official databases, and to improve product traceability through advanced technological solutions;
- effective safeguards for users, including the possibility to complain if their content is removed or restricted by a particular provider or to seek damages for a breach of the rules;
- prohibition of certain targeted advertising, such as advertising aimed at children or targeted advertising using a specific category of personal data (ethnicity, political beliefs, etc.);
- measures to make online platforms more transparent, for example, by making the terms and conditions more transparent and the algorithms used to determine recommendations or products more transparent to the user;
- an obligation for very large platforms and web browsers to prevent the misuse of their systems, in particular for displaying false information, election rigging, cyber violence against women or harmful content for minors;
- the introduction of a ban on “dark patterns”, meaning that all tricks that mislead users into making unwanted choices will be banned, such as buttons that close a pop-up but give us a bad conscience (to close a pop-up offering big discounts by entering an email, you have to “find” a tiny sign saying “no, I don’t want to save money”), or file download buttons that redirect the user to the advertiser’s website instead of downloading.
The Digital Services Act is, in terms of its legal nature, a regulation, meaning it will apply directly throughout the EU, negating the need to transpose it into the legislation of individual Member States. However, it will only apply from 17 February 2024. By then, all Member States will have to grant powers to national authorities to enforce the new rules vis-à-vis certain parties (for example, smaller platforms) and to appoint a digital services coordinator. However, the rules will apply a year earlier for those providers that the Commission is empowered to supervise (for example, very large online platforms). Another essential point to note is that it will apply to all service providers in the single market, regardless of where they are registered, i.e. outside or inside the European Union.
The Digital Services Act is another step towards a safer internet and safeguarding its users.
Author: Tina Marciuš Ravnikar, Senior Associate
