Today the European Commission proposed how Art. 40 of the Digital Services Act (#DSA) could work in practice. In a worldwide first, this article in the DSA mandated very large platforms to grant researchers access to a wide range of previously undisclosed data. Some key points👇 This Delegated Act (DA) supplements the DSA and lays down - to a certain extent - some of the technical conditions and procedures that need to be followed before access can be granted. This is a draft - comments can be submitted until the 26th of November digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commis…

The European Parliament just confirmed @vonderleyen as the next president of the European Commission for the next five years. What did she promise to do on tech policy, in particular vis-a-vis large platforms? Seven highlights below 👇🧵 The one-liner: "Tech giants must assume responsibility for their enormous systemic power in our society and economy." Even more, VDL stated that:

Some political & legal observations on what I think is the most important European Commission enforcement action to date under the Digital Services Act, against Meta for failing to take effective measures to prevent the spreading of (Russian) disinformation on their platforms 👇 The Commission @DigitalEU is suspecting an infringement of the DSA and hence is launching a procedure under the DSA into Meta for 4 distinct, yet related, reasons. ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…

The Digital Services Act is a transparency machine. Platforms have to submit every 6 months a report describing their content moderation activities in the EU. The first reports are in and there’s a wealth of information in there. Thread First up, X/Twitter . In terms of total numbers we see that account suspensions are by far the most used measure (2 mil) followed by restricting reach (90k) and removing content (54k).transparency.twitter.com/dsa-transparen…

The European Commission just released a groundbreaking study that for the first time provides a methodology to assess a systemic risk (in this case: Russian disinformation campaigns) as foreseen by the Digital Services Act🧵(1/8) #dsa #DigitalServicesActop.europa.eu/en/publication… Its headline findings speaks volumes (2/8)

Four important studies were published in @ScienceMagazine and @nature which are based on unprecedented privileged access to Facebook and Instagram data. This thread collects commentaries about the studies. 1. Asymmetric ideological segregation in exposure to political news on Facebook https://t.co/yvNvHpPt0Xscience.org/doi/full/10.11…

Google Search, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Microsoft Bing and Linkedin make significant new commitments to provide access to data for researchers in EU Code of Practice on Disinformation today ec.europa.eu/commission/pre… 🧵 1. These signatories explicitly commit to provide automated access to non-personal data & anonymised, aggregated or manifestly made public data.This is potentially huge - it could entail the development of a Crowdtangle platform for all these companies @brandonsilverm @persily

The @EDMO_EUI Working Group on Platform-to-Researcher Data Access, published its 182p report on how platforms can share platform data, including sensitive personal data, with researchers in a GDPR-compliant way.This work is important for multiple reasons 🧵edmo.eu/wp-content/upl… 1. It lays out specific guidance on how platform-to-researcher data access might legally be achieved right now, under the status quo - without depending on new provisions of the EU's Digital Services Act or the Code of Practice on Disinformation.

The European Commission proposed its proposal for a regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising today and it really adds value to the DSA. ec.europa.eu/commission/pre… Thread (1/15) This proposal covers a much broader range of actors than those in the DSA, allowing not only to focus on the broader ad-tech ecosystem but also - importantly - to influencers who receive compensation from political actors to disseminate their message. (2/15)

.@CristinaBlasi and I wrote an article for International Data Privacy Law on the murky legal practices of political micro-targeting from a GDPR perspective. It's publicly available now, just in time for the Eu's proposal for a political ads regulation 🧵👇 academic.oup.com/idpl/advance-a… In this article we focus on the two most relevant ad targeting tools used for PMT: (i) Attribute-based Audiences tools, and (ii) Personally Identifying Information Audiences tools. The latter is the most interesting one (2/n)

Tune in now! Might live tweet

https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1364193710670495745

.@resetdottech The DSA is the first major legislative effort that understands audits as an essential component for tech regulation. Without it regulators have no ability to open the black box of how automated systems curate organic and paid content on these platforms.