Transparency initiatives in the DSA: An Exciting Step Forward in Transparency Reporting

In January 2022, the European Parliament voted in favor of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a horizontal legislation for the EU’s digital single market that seeks to define platforms’ responsibility regarding user content. The draft law also contains several concrete provisions aimed at mitigating certain harms of online advertising, including imposing a ban on ‘dark patterns’ when getting consent from users (Article 13a), a behavior that recently led to the French DPA imposing fines of over $200 million on Facebook and Google. While the DSA seeks to promote a more free internet in numerous ways, this article focuses on its transparency mandates for content moderation decisions and the provisions mandating researcher access to data.