What is the Digital Services Act or DSA?

• Signed in 2022, the Digital Services Act applies stricter rules to very large online platforms and search engines, defined as those with more than 45 million active users.

What is the DSA?

The Digital Services Act, also known as the DSA, is a European Union regulation that seeks to provide legal coverage for the regulation of online platforms and services.

Its main objective is to help create a digital space that is safer, fairer and more transparent for all citizens, by forcing companies to take responsibility for illegal content and protecting fundamental rights.

As explained on the official EU website, this law aims to ‘establish a clear set of rules across the EU’, while ‘also allowing smaller platforms, SMEs and start-ups to expand in Europe, fostering innovation, growth and competitiveness’.

The principle governing the DSA is that what is illegal in the physical world should also be illegal in the digital world and will apply to all online intermediaries providing services in the EU.

What are the main objectives of the DSA?

This regulation was proposed by the European Commission and subsequently negotiated and signed by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU – some of the main institutions of the European Union – on 19 October 2022.

For citizens as a whole, the Digital Services Act aims to protect digital rights such as transparency in the criteria for content removal, the ability to appeal certain content moderation decisions, and the ability to report illegal content, services or goods through easy-to-use mechanisms.

Similarly, the DSA aims to ensure that platforms adopt measures to guarantee greater protection for minors, offer the option of non-personalised feeds, and provide advertising transparency that includes information such as who is issuing the advertisement.

For businesses, the DSA means having a single set of rules for the entire EU, as well as an approach that is proportionate to the functions, sizes, and impacts of each service.

Which companies are included?

All online intermediary service companies that connect users with content, products or services must comply with this law if they operate within the territory of this organisation, regardless of whether or not they are based within the borders of the 27 states that currently make up the European Union.

Specifically, online markets (or markets online), social networks, content sharing platforms, and accommodation and travel booking platforms.

As mentioned above, stricter rules apply to very large online platforms and search engines with more than 45 million active users. Twenty-three platforms with these characteristics and two online search engines of the same nature have been identified.

Telefónica’s position

The Strategic Agenda 2024-2029 is a European Union plan to establish the priorities associated with this institutional cycle and is based on three pillars: a free and democratic Europe, a strong and secure Europe, and a prosperous and competitive Europe.

Telefónica, under the slogan ‘Digital for innovation, green in its design’, has a position on the Strategic Agenda 2024-2029 in which it advocates stimulating growth through digital innovation by promoting technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Edge computing

This position also includes references to the DSA, although it was approved in the previous EU institutional cycle.

This Digital Services Act, together with the Digital Markets Act, are positioned as mechanisms for continuous supervision in creating a fairer and more dynamic digital environment that favours digital innovation and also boosts the competitiveness of European companies in the face of the dominance of large platforms, through measures of transparency, neutrality, consumer protection and competition or international cooperation.

As stated in this Telefónica document, initiatives such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the Artificial Intelligence Act seek to establish comprehensive frameworks for the protection of individual rights, the rule of law and democracy, as well as measures against monopolistic and anti-competitive practices.

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