DSA: A historic agreement
The new European law for digital services could be a template for regulating Big Tech
European lawmakers agreed on new rules last week for digital services, sealing the contours of a law likely to give a foundation to how social media and e-commerce are governed globally. Overall, the Digital Services Act (DSA) builds on the conditional immunity given to online service providers under European law. The premise is simple: Companies can keep an intermediary status so long as they do not knowingly allow illegal content on their services. DSA now tightens the penalties for companies not acting promptly enough if illegal speech is brought to their notice. This is different from American law with broader immunities.
Then there are significant new protections as well. DSA will compel large digital companies to disclose how they profile their users, the mechanism by which their content recommender systems work, and give opt-out options. In other words, it will for the first time open algorithms to scrutiny. Another step significant in combating user behaviour manipulation is in DSA banning socalled dark patterns, or the practice of influencing people’s choices in, say, making a purchase or opening an article through clever user interface tricks. Additionally, companies will be obligated to disclose how they decide to take down content and how advertisers target users. Targeted advertising aimed at children will be completely prohibited, the rules propose.
DSA is a landmark legislation since nationstates have grappled with the challenge of coming up with rules for companies such as Facebook (now Meta) and Amazon, which are headquartered under a single foreign jurisdiction but influence societies and businesses beyond national borders. Historically, this has meant that these companies are more responsive to, say, when speech is manipulated to cause an insurrection at the US Capitol, but not when it is used to further genocide in Myanmar. Equally challenging have been attempts to understand technological harms, some of which did not exist until recently. For instance, the online business model today hinges on surveillance of user behaviour to maximise the accuracy of advertisements, the main source of revenue.
DSA promises to be a template to at least dam some of these problems, even as global tech regulation will likely need constant evolution.