EU Digital Services Act
What it does
Platforms serving EU users answer to the DSA. Member states certify trusted flaggers, entities whose content reports platforms must treat with priority, and takedown orders from any member state's authorities travel across the bloc. The largest platforms carry systemic-risk duties: they must assess and mitigate risks including disinformation, which is lawful speech, with the Commission as their direct regulator. A crisis power lets the Commission demand special measures during emergencies it defines. Noncompliance risks fines up to 6 percent of global turnover. Applied to the biggest platforms since August 2023 and to everyone since February 17, 2024.
Why it matters
The DSA built the machinery for governments to shape what can be said online without ever formally banning speech: certified flaggers, risk duties over lawful content, a crisis switch, and revenue-scaled fines that make overcompliance the rational strategy. It regulates the world by default, since platforms rarely build a separate internet for Europe, and it is the model cited from Brasilia to Westminster.
Our take
The DSA's vocabulary is risk mitigation, trusted flagging, and crisis response; censorship appears nowhere in it. The pressure is structural: when a fine reaches 6 percent of global revenue, a platform does not litigate close calls about lawful speech, it removes them. The law's authors call that the system working.
Votes
- European Parliament — Adoption (539 to 54) · July 5, 2022
Timeline
- December 15, 2020Proposed by the European Commission
- July 5, 2022Parliament adopted the DSA, 539 to 54
- November 16, 2022Entered into force
- August 25, 2023Obligations began for the largest platforms
- February 17, 2024Full application to all platforms
Related bills
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