In this paper, the authors discuss the implications of regulated data access under the European Digital Services Act for election research.
News and Research articles on Digital Services Act (DSA)
This paper explores how the Digital Services Act’s Transparency Database enables platform observability, revealing critical insights into the practices of content moderation across the EU.
The EU’s 2022 Digital Services Act mandates data access for researchers to study platform risks, but delays and diverging opinions of authorities hold back the DSA’s practical implementation.
From negative impacts on teenagers’ mental health to the abuse of data collection for political microtargeting and potentially abetting genocide against the Rohingya: in the past decade, online platforms like In
Focusing on recommender systems used by dominant social media platforms as an example of high-reach AI, this study explores the directionality of transparency provisions introduced by the Digital Services Act and highlights the pivotal role of oversight authorities in addressing risks posed by high-reach AI technologies.
Recent public discourse on social media sounds somewhat dystopian: Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and co. knowingly use manipulative design features and algorithms to keep users hooked. Children and young people are particularly susceptible to this — staring at their screen for countless hours, they become addicted, depressed, and plagued by anxiety. Losing control over their own behaviour, they neglect other activities. A problem so serious that politicians need to intervene.
On the 23 February 2023, the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) issued a decision against Ediscom S.p.A. (Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali, 2023) explicitly referring to “dark patterns”, i.e. online design choices that manipulate users’ decision-making to benefit digital services.
On the inadequacy of the risk-based approach for generative and general purpose AI.
This op-ed is part of a series of opinion pieces edited by Amélie Heldt in the context of a workshop on the Digital Services Act Package hosted by the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society on 15 and 16 November 2021 in Berlin. This workshop brought together legal scholars and social scientists to get a better understanding of the DSA Package, in detail and on a meta level.