You may have noticed that cookie banners are becoming more and more extensive, with more choices about what you allow and what you don’t allow. This is because online platforms have to be increasingly transparent about what you see and why.
This includes letting users know why exactly they are presented with those advertisements or information. So that users can choose to turn off that personalized environment. It is one of the consequences of the more than hundred-page European Digital Services Act, internationally known as the Digital Services Act (DSA).
1 What kind of law is the DSA anyway?
The DSA is the ambitious European answer to the power of large (American) tech companies. In recent years, it has become clear how much data they collect and how important the role of these platforms is in spreading (dis)information, which, for example, influences elections. Or there’s revenge porn going around. On top of that, the largest companies are American or Chinese owned, yet they impact the lives of European citizens. The law gives European users more rights and online services more obligations.
The DSA applies to a wide range of companies, with the common feature that they are an intermediary that brings supply and demand into contact online. Consider Booking.com, where a consumer (demand) can find an overview of hotels that can be booked (supply). But also social media that present messages from users to other users. As a result, YouTube is included, because users upload videos that can be viewed by other users, but Netflix is not, because members cannot share anything there themselves.
2 Those rules have been in place for a few months, right?
For some companies yes. The DSA is structured as a pyramid, with the amount and strictness of the rules varying. Roughly speaking, the more users a platform has, the more responsibilities, and therefore the more rules that apply to it.
For the top group of nineteen very large online platforms and search engines, the rules already came into effect on August 25, 2023. These are the companies that have more than 45 million European users per month. Think of Google and Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok and LinkedIn. But also shopping platforms such as Amazon and Zalando. The last two companies have challenged this status as a ‘Very Large Online Platform’ (VLOP). That process is still ongoing.
From February 17, 2024, the law also applies to smaller platforms. There are thousands of them in Europe. Think of Marktplaats and OnlyFans, but also bol (on which external sellers can offer their products) and, for example, BeReal, which many children in Europe attend. From now on, all these platforms must announce every six months how many users they have in the EU. This should help the European Commission to identify new VLOPs. Because they often joke about their user numbers, the EC also conducts its own research.
3 What will I notice in practice?
You should have already noticed something on the major platforms. This way you should be able to use them without receiving recommendations based on your online behavior. TikTok now offers that option, albeit reluctantly. From the home screen you have to find your way through another five screens to adjust that option. The question is whether users are waiting for this: TikTok is popular because the algorithm’s recommendations match the user’s interests so well.
Something similar can be done on Instagram: instead of being recommended feed you can scroll through a chronological list of posts from accounts you follow. But you cannot set that feed as default, you have to go there manually every time.
You probably received a pop-up on Facebook (and clicked away) with the choice for a paid subscription of 12.99 euros per month. If you do not close this, you accept the display of personal advertisements and the use of your personal data and surfing behavior for these advertisements. The amount of the subscription fee already shows that the companies are happy to continue using that data about you.
4 Are you now allowed to post less on platforms?
This especially applies to advertisers. Minors may no longer receive advertisements that are tailored to their personal interests. Users must also be able to see why they are presented with a particular advertisement and who paid for it.
Under the DSA, major platforms must do more against the spread of disinformation and, for example, attempts to influence elections. At the same time, the European Commission does not want to become a censor that determines what can be said online. Member States decide this themselves.
In addition, there will be more transparency about moderation: if a platform removes something, the poster will be told why this happened and there should be an opportunity to appeal.
All these decisions must be placed in a central European database. It currently contains 4.4 billion moderation decisions. The vast majority (3.7 billion) comes from an unexpected platform: Google Shopping, which deletes a huge number of messages because they are scams. The number two follows at a great distance: TikTok, with 288 million decisions.
Under the DSA, there is a ban on placing advertisements based on the political preference of the internet user. But it is easy for political parties to work around this, as became clear during the House of Representatives elections at the end of last year. For example, D66 targeted highly educated Facebook and Instagram users with an interest in veganism and you were shown Think advertisements if you had ever bought a ticket from Royal Air Maroc.
An important element of the law is that users must be able to see who they are purchasing something from. Marktplaats, eBay or online stores are only a kind of intermediary. It must be clear who the seller is, so that you know who you can complain to if a product does not comply. It still happens that users think they are purchasing something from a platform, but they actually do so from a third party.
5 Is this the end of online anonymity?
That is not necessary, but the threat is there. The new European laws now coming into force force online companies to learn more about the users of their platforms, for example to prevent them from serving children harmful information or advertisements. To do this, they must request information about those users and be able to check it. In some cases, companies are also obliged to share information with the tax authorities.
“Users are becoming less anonymous and companies and product providers must be transparent,” summarizes Ilse van Wendel de Joode, DSA specialist at PwC. And that fits in with an online trend of less anonymity and more rules about removing content and blocking accounts. “You see it happen on Instagram, for example, where people disable the option to comment on their posts.”
In Brussels, we are currently working hard on a European digital identity. This should give citizens the opportunity to log in to online services without revealing unnecessary data. You then store your personal data in an ‘ID wallet’, from which you only share what is absolutely necessary. For example, proof that you are over eighteen, if you want to buy alcohol online or gamble. Online platforms are required to accept this method of logging in.
The Brussels law is not yet completely finished. Until then, large tech companies are very busy collecting a lot of data about European citizens.
6 Who is going to enforce all this?
The European Commission enforces the rules for the major globally operating online platforms. There are high fines for non-compliance with the law: up to 6 percent of the global annual turnover of such a company. An additional daily fine of 5 percent of the daily turnover will be added as long as the infringement continues.
In addition, every EU country has a national supervisory authority. In the Netherlands, this will be the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). This is the first point of contact for companies registered in that country, such as bol in the Netherlands. Companies located outside the EU must open an office or appoint a representative within the EU. The idea is that you can always reach someone to complain to and that as a consumer you are not faced with an elusive online juggernaut.
7 Is this the only law with which Brussels wants to tackle big tech?
No. The DSA is part of a broad package with which the European Commission wants to gain control over online companies. At the same time, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is being introduced, which will tackle so-called ‘gatekeepers’: tech companies that, according to Brussels, have so much power that other companies are dependent on them. Consider Apple, for example: through the App Store, that company now determines which apps people can install on their iPhones and iPads and has control over the costs charged for this. Because of the DMA, Apple must also allow other download stores. Something similar applies to WhatsApp: it is so dominant that it is difficult to set up another chat service. That is why it should soon be possible to also send a message from WhatsApp to users of other services such as Signal.