- The EU Commission opens the first formal DSA investigation against X (formerly Twitter) for alleged breaches of DSA obligations.
- VLOPs like X must document, assess and mitigate risks and ensure compliance departments, audits, transparency reporting and researcher data access.
- Investigation focuses on illegal content, disinformation, transparency obligations, researcher access to data and possible misleading user interfaces.
The EU Commission has announced that it has opened a formal investigation against X (formerly Twitter) under the Digital Services Act (DSA) has opened.
The DSA applies to intermediary services offered to users established or located in the Union, irrespective of the place of establishment of the provider of those intermediary services.
He knows a Duty pyramidThe “Very Large Online Platforms” category includes providers of “very large online platforms”, VLOPs) and of “very large online search engines” (“Very Large Online Search Engines”, VLOEs) Additional obligations be imposed (Art. 33 et seq. DSA; see also here). These are online providers with at least 45 million active users in the EU. In April 2023, the Commission designated 19 providers as VLOPs on the basis of Art. 33 (4) DSA. classifiedincluding Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Facebook, some Google services, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, Wikipedia, YouTube and Zalando, as well as Twitter and X.
Such VLOPs and VLOEs must, for example, meet certain Document risksevaluate and mitigate them. Such risks may arise in particular from the dissemination of illegal content and may also include risks to fundamental rights and certain vulnerable persons that may arise, for example, from recommendation systems or other algorithmic systems, from the moderation of content, the terms and conditions, the display of advertising or the processing of personal data (Art. 34 f. DSA). VLOPs and VLOEs must also have a Compliance department set up (Art. 41), to audit (Art. 37), Transparency reports (Art. 42) and researchers Data access (Art. 40).
Added to this are the General obligations in particular from Art. 19 et seq. (e.g. requirements for complaints management and out-of-court dispute resolution, for blocking accounts with obviously unlawful content, transparency obligations and requirements for advertising, for recommendation systems and for the GTC).
The investigation against X is the first investigation under the DSA. A preliminary investigation by the Commission has apparently revealed indications of violations. It concerns in particular:
- the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, in particular risk mitigation measures and the reporting and response mechanism for illegal content;
- Measures to combat disinformation;
- Transparency measures;
- data access for researchers;
- Possible deceptions in the user interface (e.g. with the blue check marks).