The Underbelly of the DSA: Safety at the Expense of Trust?

Gonçalo Machado Borges sign the article "The Underbelly of the DSA: Safety at the Expense of Trust?", published by Lexology.

«Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, the Digital Services Act or “DSA”, was published in the EU Official Journal on October 22 and came into force last November. This wide-ranging EU regulation will revolutionize the way in which online platforms can conduct their business in the European Union and raises a significant compliance challenge to many providers of intermediary services who must now make sweeping adjustments to internal procedures, online interfaces, and reporting practices, among many other aspects.

The DSA pursues the goal of ensuring a safe, predictable, and trustworthy online environment and does so, essentially, through a focus on online moderation of illegal content, a concept which is construed broadly, to cover information relating to illegal content, products, services, and activities. It may be the case that certain information is unlawful (e.g., illegal hate speech or terrorist content), or is rendered unlawful because it relates to illegal activities (e.g., sharing of content depicting child sexual abuse, online stalking, sale of counterfeit goods or content piracy).

A lot has been made of the dangers of mis- or disinformation but the risks posed by the new DSA framework to diversity of opinion have been mostly swept under the rug. This is dangerous because it shows the possibility that mechanisms introduced by the DSA may, depending upon the way they are implemented, be used to “shut down” dissenting opinion and, moreover, because if fails to acknowledge that there is a crisis of confidence well upstream of the perceived crisis of content».

Clique here to read the article.