Regulate the jungle of the digital universe. This is the ambitious project of the European Union. The EU will for the first time since 2001 adopt legislation on the sector, with the DMA, which concerns digital markets, and the DSA, which concerns content. This Thursday, January 20, the European Parliament adopts the draft regulation on digital services, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which should be ratified during the French Presidency of the Council.
From our special correspondent in Strasbourg, Juliette Gheerbrant
It is a unique project on such a scale. It targets illegal content such as incitement to hatred, harassment, child pornography, as well as illegal products. The principle is simple summarizes the deputy Sandro Gozzi, of the French delegation of the centrist group Renew. “ Everything that is illegal offline must become illegal online, whereas today everything that happens online is a bit of the Wild West he says.
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At least 10,000 digital platforms operate in Europe, and a handful of them mobilize the bulk of economic activity: commerce, leisure, information, etc.
Control and recourse of citizens
The legislation will also be imposed to varying degrees on all platform intermediaries. And citizens will have more effective means of control and redress. ” We want to know how the algorithms work. The platform will assume moderation rules, for everything that is a risk to security, a risk to our fundamental rights. And also, we are introducing a system of sanctions for platforms that do not assume the responsibilities of good moderation, in the context of misinformation or fake news. “, continues Sandro Gozzi.
Researchers and NGOs will have access to algorithms that have until now been real black boxes, and the text facilitates user control over their data. The environmental group welcomes it, it has also obtained to limit automatic moderation, so that a human being and not a machine decides on the validity of content. On the other hand, the Greens regret that automatic recommendations are not better controlled or that targeted advertising remains authorized.