The Digital Services Act harmonises due-diligence duties for intermediary services, including hosting services, online platforms and very large online platforms and search engines. It updates and complements the e-Commerce framework and introduces standardised mechanisms for content moderation, advertising transparency, user redress, marketplace trader traceability and cooperation with authorities. Its AI relevance is direct where platform functions are automated: providers that use recommender systems must disclose in plain and intelligible language the ‘main parameters’ and provide a user-facing functionality to choose and modify options. VLOPs and VLOSE must assess and mitigate ‘systemic risks’ that stem from service design and related ‘algorithmic systems’, subject to independent audit, enhanced transparency and EU-level supervision. Advertising obligations require clear labelling and disclosure of ‘the main parameters’ used for targeting, alongside limits on profiling using special-category data and a prohibition on profiling-based advertising to minors. The Commission holds exclusive supervision for the additional systemic-risk duties of very large services and may require data access and explanations of the design, logic and functioning of algorithmic systems. Within the EU digital rulebook, the DSA anchors horizontal platform accountability and sits alongside the AI Act, NIS 2 and product-safety law.
Full name (additional link): Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market For Digital Services and amending Directive 2000/31/EC (Digital Services Act) (Text with EEA relevance)