Source: European Parliament
Under Article 56 of the Digital Services Act (DSA)[1], the Commission has powers to supervise and enforce the regulation in relation to providers of designated very large online platforms (VLOPs) and of very large online search engines.
Since the DSA does not as such regulate content nor individual content moderation decisions-which are a matter for specific laws and the competent courts to determine — but rather the processes online platforms have in place, these powers do not cover content moderation actions.
However, the DSA imposes on providers several obligations to increase the transparency and accountability of their services for all users.
For example, Article 17 of the DSA mandates the providers of hosting services, thus including LinkedIn, to provide statements of reasons to any recipients of the service affected by restrictions, such as the suspension of accounts, imposed on the basis of the information shared.
In addition, pursuant to Article 15 of the DSA, providers of intermediary services — thus again including LinkedIn — shall make publicly available, at least once a year, transparency reports on their content moderation activities.
Those reports shall contain information about the content moderation engaged in at the providers’ own initiative, including the use of automated tools and the number and type of measures taken that affect the availability, visibility and accessibility of information provided by users. LinkedIn transparency reports can be found online.[2]
As regards systemic risks, it is for the providers of VLOPs such as LinkedIn to diligently identify, analyse and assess them pursuant to Article 34 of the DSA, and to put in place mitigation measures accordingly pursuant to Article 35, under the supervision of the Commission.