Digital Services Act is intended to regulate the power of online platforms. Accordingly, it represents a catalog of standards to which large companies such as Amazon, Google and Meta must adhere in the future. It is to apply throughout the EU. According to the EU Commission, the fundamental rights of users in particular must be protected.
This concerns not only data protection, but also the removal of illegal content.
Meta in particular, with its construct of various social networks, Amazon with its gigantic marketplace, and also Apple with its large app store for software applications will have to prepare for new due diligence obligations toward their customers. In addition, the EU also wants to include providers around the topic of network infrastructure in the scope. In particular, providers where you can register your domain or access cloud services are to be included. The EU wants to make a clear distinction between large and small companies.
One requirement of the Digital Services Act is quite obviously to protect users on the Internet from harmful content. To make this possible, the companies concerned have a duty to enable their users to report such content. To ensure that the reporting tool is not misused, the EU would also like to enable cooperation with so-called “trusted flaggers”. These would then act as a kind of moderator and take a neutral position. On top of that, the threshold for deleting illegal content is to be lowered. In particular, if authorities want to take action against such content, a judge is still required. This is to be omitted, which is to simplify, for example, the deletion of hate comments..
On top of that, this results in a deletion obligation for the corresponding platform. Selbiger is not only to comply with the platform as soon as possible. In serious violations of the law must also be informed of the police. However, the focus is not only on insulting or threatening people.
Quick deletion also makes sense, especially when it comes to fake news. Just how dangerous this can be was recently demonstrated by the excesses of the lateral thinking movement.
The Digital Services Act also makes special reference to
neutrality in the area of news feeds. Since tailored news recommendations can cause people to slip into their very own news bubble, in future at least the algorithms on which the recommendations are based are to be disclosed.
. At the same time, the big tech companies have a duty to
protect their users not only from insults and threats. Defamatory content that affects certain population groups or violates the protection of minors must also be removed from the platform immediately, if possible.
https://basic-tutorials.com/news/eu-bodies-agree-on-contents-of-the-digital-services-act/
