Belgium (AFP) – When the harshest EU regulations on online material since social media first took off take effect on Friday, the biggest digital corporations in the world won’t have somewhere to run.
The historic law is a tool in the legal toolbox of the European Union, which is being used to rein in Internet giants and police law and order in what authorities have called the “Wild West” of the internet.
Due to the possibility of severe fines, the Digital Services Act (DSA) requires businesses to more actively monitor digital material and shield online consumers from hate speech and misinformation.
From this Friday, all eyes will be on the platforms’ compliance with the DSA and how it will alter online life in Europe. Experts believe it might set off a tsunami of change that extends beyond of the EU.
According to Suzanne Vergnolle, a professor of technological law at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts in Paris, “The DSA is part of a bigger strategy to give more power to individuals, to the regulators, to civil society.”
She told AFP that it was “another step towards greater accountability.”
Under the DSA, websites with at least 45 million active monthly users must abide by stricter regulations, including a requirement to successfully combat misinformation and yearly compliance checks.
The European Union named 19 websites in April, including the Amazon Store, Apple’s AppStore, Google’s Play, Maps, and Shopping, as well as the clothing retailer Zalando, the social media juggernauts Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter (now rebranded X), as well as Google and Microsoft’s Bing search engines.
Amazon and Zalando have launched legal challenges even before the regulations take effect, arguing that their platforms do not meet the requirements to be in violation of the first round of regulation.
Hastily comply
Individual users won’t suddenly awaken next week and start feeling the impacts of the DSA, despite the possibility that the changes will have an effect.
“It’s something where we’re already starting to see trickles of it in terms of platforms proactively going about doing their compliance,” said John Albert of AlgorithmWatch, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.
Thierry Breton, the industry commissioner and the EU’s main enforcer of digital regulations, declared that businesses “had now enough time to adapt their systems to their new obligations.”
He assured AFP that “my services and I will vigorously enforce the DSA” and “fully use our new powers to investigate and sanction platforms where necessary.”
That was clearly seen in the reforms that businesses announced this summer.
For instance, the owners of Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, Meta and TikTok, declared in August that they will take compliance-related measures, such as offering European users more control over how they see material and the choice to reject suggestions based on profiling.
Since billionaire Elon Musk gained control of the Twitter network last year and made content decisions that raised questions about compliance, the EU will be paying particular attention to X.
Musk, who has started a cost-cutting crusade for the platform, had already received a warning from Breton that X requires more resources to filter out harmful content.
Google, on the other hand, claims that it has already enacted practices geared at increased accountability and transparency and has not waited for the DSA’s guidelines to take effect.
According to the European Commission, businesses must nonetheless comply notwithstanding any legal obstacles.
Possible penalties
More corporations may be put to the list, according to EU authorities.
If the restrictions are broken, a corporation might be fined up to 6% of its global revenue or possibly banned.
For significant IT companies, another EU rule is on the horizon.
The bloc will announce which IT firms must adhere to stricter competition laws under the new Digital Markets Act (DMA) next month.
A list of businesses that Brussels considered to be “gatekeepers” was released in July and included Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Samsung.
Such a designation has additional restrictions, such as barring businesses from dictating which applications come pre-installed on phones or from pointing consumers toward their own products.
A business that violates the DMA faces fines of up to 10% of its yearly global revenue.
several laws
The DSA and DMA are not the EU’s first attempts to regulate the activities of digital companies.
The massive GDPR data privacy regulation from the EU went into force in 2018, drastically altering how businesses handle users’ data and imposing fines on those who break the rules.
Brussels is also pushing to enact a bill that would govern artificial intelligence for the first time ever.
The DSA may only be available in Europe, but Vergnolle said that its effects may be noticed everywhere.
She predicted that it would have a similar impact to what GDPR had previously, but it would take years.
According to Marc Mosse, a senior attorney at August Debouzy in Paris, “the platforms will use these tools globally, so there is no reason to deprive users outside of Europe of them.”
Even in Europe, stricter regulatory oversight is probably going to be implemented after the new standards.
“The game here is long. We’re only beginning to map the hazards and determine how to assess them, said Albert.