EU bolsters DSA compliance, multimodal moderation and Bluesky release T&S report
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your need-to-know news and analysis about platform policy, content moderation and internet regulation. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
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Let’s get into today’s round-up. Thanks for reading — BW
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
The European Commission moved to dispel claims that it is going easy on US platforms (EiM #276) by making two moves this week.
First, it requested further information about X/Twitter’s recommender systems and commercial APIs as part of its ongoing investigation into the Digital Services Act (EiM #229). EU officials had reported concerns about “how the platform promotes [far-right] content, but also downgrades other voices” and this move will allow “direct fact-finding on content moderation and virality of accounts”. Perhaps including its executive chairman and CTO?
Small print: Under Article 27 of the DSA, platforms must explain how their recommender systems work in “plain and intelligible language” and, where there are multiple systems, allow a user "to modify at any time their preferred option”. A quick glance suggest X/Twitter's Ts & Cs lays that out most of the info required — but will it be enough for the Commission? X/Twitter must be forthcoming with the information by 15th February and retain information until 31 December 2025 or whenever its investigation is concluded.
On top of that, the Commission announced an updated code of conduct on hate speech, the voluntary measure set up in 2016 following a spate of terror attacks in Belgium and France. The new "code of conduct+" will now form part of DSA compliance.
Under the code, the 13 platforms that have signed up — including Facebook, Instagram and X/Twitter — must demonstrate how they are preventing hate speech and have been implored by the Commission to share new data on hate speech number of incidences broken down by race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. I can't imagine what that might be in response to.