Source: European Parliament
Under Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065[1], the Digital Services Act (DSA), providers of hosting services are obliged to inform their users of the content moderation decisions they take and explain the reasons behind those decisions.
Pursuant to Article 24(5) of the DSA, the DSA Transparency Database[2], set up and managed by the Commission, contains the public record of such decisions, to which providers of online platforms are obliged to contribute for the purpose of enhancing the near real-time scrutiny of illegal and harmful content online.
In the context of setting up the DSA Transparency Database, the Commission voluntarily held a targeted consultation with interested stakeholders.
Responses to this targeted consultation, which ran from 20 June to 18 July 2023, were not published due to its data privacy terms and the confidentiality requested by some of the respondents.
To avoid the reidentification of individual responses but still inform the public about the outcome of the consultation, an in-depth summary report was published on the Commission’s website[3].
In addition to the Application Programming Interface documentation[4], an explanation of the information held in the DSA Transparency Database[5] details how its technical specifications reflect the legal requirements of Article 17 of the DSA. All of the d atabase’s documentation is publicly available on the DSA Transparency Database website as well as on its GitHub page[6].
The Commission and digital services coo rdinators are responsible for monitoring compliance with DSA obligations. Where the Commission suspects a provider of very large online platforms or of very large online search engine to have breached those obligations, it may take enforcement actions against that provider.
- [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/2065/oj
- [2] https://transparency.dsa.ec.europa.eu/
- [3] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/digital-services-act-summary-report-public-consultation-dsa-transparency-database
- [4] https://transparency.dsa.ec.europa.eu/page/api-documentation
- [5] https://transparency.dsa.ec.europa.eu/page/documentation
- [6] https://github.com/digital-services-act/transparency-database