The Digital Services Act - European censorship of thoughtcrime

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Through its Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Commission has already put into operation arguably the most ambitious manifestation yet of this grand coalition between government and business. The DSA imposes a legal requirement on very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large online search engines (VLOSEs) to rapidly remove illegal content and take action against hate speech, dis- or misinformation if it is deemed to have “actual or foreseeable negative effects on civic discourse and electoral processes, and public security” and/or “actual or foreseeable negative effects in relation to gender-based violence, the protection of public health and minors and serious negative consequences to the person’s physical and mental well-being.”

Besides take-downs, other tools at governments’ disposal include de-monetisation and de-ranking. The European Commission has primary, but not exclusive, regulatory responsibility for VLOPs and VLOSEs. In a few weeks’ time, the same requirements will apply to all other online service providers, though responsibility for execution and enforcement will lie with national authorities.
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The European Commission has published an interactive dashboard that summarizes data on content moderation decisions from multiple online platform providers. Under the Digital Services Act (DSA), online platform providers must submit explanations of their content moderation decisions to the DSA Transparency Database. These explanations (referred to as “statements of reasons”) must include the category of violation, what action was taken, whether the content was detected using automation, and whether the decision was made using automation, among other pieces of information.

The dashboard contains multiple charts, including some breaking down timeline of reports, what categories of violation are most frequently reported, most common types of action taken, and percentage of overall violation types, both overall and by individual platform. Nearly 3.5 billion statements of reason were incorporated into the dashboard (over 2.8 billion were solely from Google Shopping).
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