Advancing Platform Research through the EU Digital Services Act

On this panel, Felix Reda, former Member of the European Parliament and BKC affiliate, Malte Spitz, secretary general of German fundamental rights litigation NGO Society for Civil Rights (GFF) and Adam Holland, Project Manager of the Lumen project at BKC, explore how researchers, journalists and activists from across the globe can make use of the DSA’s provisions to improve our understanding of online communication and hold platform operators to account.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) presents the most ambitious horizontal regulation of online platforms to date. It is likely to set global standards for platform regulation due to the EU’s market size and the corresponding Brussels Effect. In the area of platform research, it will have a global effect as soon as it becomes applicable in early 2024, by placing far-reaching transparency obligations on online platforms. In its conception, the European legislators have placed great faith in a vibrant civil society and academic community to contribute to a healthy platform ecosystem. Not only does the Digital Services Act give civil society legal standing to represent the interests of platform users, but it also requires online platforms of any size to explain their content moderation decisions and publish those explanations in an openly accessible database, inspired by the Berkman Klein Center’s Lumen database of notice and action requests. In addition, a new research data access regime will allow international researchers to request information from very large online platforms such as AliExpress, Amazon, Facebook, TikTok or the Apple and Google app stores that is necessary for research into systemic risks posed by those platforms, in areas such as fundamental rights, dissemination of illegal content, electoral discourse, public health or hate speech.