EU law kicks in aimed at making life online safer, less toxic

Still, she said, it remains uncertain whether users will see a lot change because platforms may be able to bombard users with ads tailored to them even without relying on the most sensitive data. She said algorithms are able to draw inferences from the “digital traces” left by users.

“Will this regulation stop inferences from being made and used?” Głowacka said. “That's a big question mark. It's very difficult to prove that inferred sensitive data were actually used for personalizing purposes.”

The rules also aim to protect minors by forbidding their personal data from being used and ensuring children are not exposed to harmful content.

Friday's strict rules apply to 19 platforms and search engines that have 45 million or more monthly users, which is roughly equal to 10% of the EU's population. This summer, Amazon and Zalando filed lawsuits challenging their classification under the scheme.

Running afoul of the rules could be immensely costly, with fines of up to 6% of a company's global revenue. The law even allows platforms to be banned from the EU for failure to comply.

Breton, the EU commissioner overseeing DSA, raised that possibility during a July interview on France Info, where he blasted internet platforms for not deleting content calling on people to riot during an eruption of violence in France over the police killing of a teen motorist. Rights groups were alarmed over his statements.

The new law tees up a likely feud with Musk, the maverick American billionaire. EU officials have scolded Musk for treating the internet as “the Wild West” and said X must comply with the law or face sanctions.

Głowacka does not believe the law will lead to online censorship, as Musk contends, thanks to an appeals process for people who've had their content blocked.

“It empowers the users whose content got removed,” she said. “Now, those decisions can be taken totally arbitrarily. When the DSA is effective, [platforms] will have to justify” why content was removed and provide users the chance to file an appeal.

In six months, any business providing digital services to Europeans will have to comply with the DSA, though they will face fewer obligations than the biggest platforms.

Big Tech companies have already made changes in preparation for the new rules.

Amazon, for instance, opened a new channel for reporting suspected illegal products and is providing more information about third-party merchants.

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, says it has added new features to give users more information about the ads they see. It also says teenagers no longer see ads based on their online activity. Meta says it has 1,000 employees working on compliance with DSA.

Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, said in a statement that “it is right to seek to hold large platforms like ours to account through things like reporting and auditing, rather than attempting to micromanage individual pieces of content.”

TikTok now gives users an “additional reporting option” for content, including advertising, that they believe is illegal and harmful, such as hate speech and harassment, content on suicide and self-harm, misinformation or frauds and scams. The video platform also allows users to turn off systems that recommend videos based on what they have previously viewed, a pattern that's been blamed for drawing TikTok users toward increasingly extreme posts.

Snapchat says its users who are 18 and older will get more transparency and control over ads they see, including “details and insight” on why they're shown specific ads.

“Misinformation and the spread of harmful content is really not something new but the scale at which this is happening has been increasing in the past half decade or more and the dynamics are very quick,” said Marian-Andrei Rizoiu, a computer scientist at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia

“Many of us have been advocating for a while that the solution needs to be legislative,” he said during a telephone interview. “At some point, we had to step in and start to regulate what flows and what doesn't flow on online social media.”

Rizoiu has conducted modeling that shows the rules have the potential to drastically reduce the amount of harmful content Europeans are exposed to. He said the old tools used to fight harmful content, such as fact checkers, and even artificial intelligence, are not sufficient.

“The tools we have been deploying to safeguard or filter some of the content were not keeping up,” Rizoiu said.

He called the EU's new rules a well-balanced mechanism that gives users and independent experts oversight of the flow of content.

“The flagging and checking are taken out of the control of the platform, and it is being uniformed and standardized,” he said.

Leaving it up to the platforms to moderate content has not worked, Rizoiu said, in part because they tend to deploy moderators who are ill-equipped to decide what content should be removed: “They are in third-party countries; they are non-English speaking; they don't know the local context.”

By contrast, under the new EU system, content flagged by users will be examined by moderators based in same country as the person requesting the removal of content.

“At least they will speak the language; they will be aware of the customs; they will be aware of the moral values; and they will know the hypes, the memes, the topics of interest,” Rizoiu said. “Now, you have people living in completely different countries, continents, moderating content that they can barely understand.”

He added that tech companies “don't really have any incentive to do any moderation” because they profit by keeping users engaged on with their platforms.

“They are looking to maximize attention on their platforms,” he said. “And negative stories bring more attention and sensational stories bring attention.”

Rizoiu said social media has become toxic for democracies as people become more polarized and influenced by disinformation, and the DSA is the best attempt yet at reining in those hazards.

“We are having real problems caused by the information that flows,” he said. “We need an antidote and this is as close as it gets.”

The EU law may spur other countries to take a similar approach.

“We are going to see more of this over the next couple of years,” Rizoiu said. “The European Union has a track record of innovating and regulating the big players after which other countries mold their responses.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau

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