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New rules meant to safeguard people from illegal content, targeted ads, unwanted algorithmic feeds and disinformation online are finally in force, thanks to new regulation in the European Union that took effect this month.

That’s great for consumers in France, Germany, Latvia, Luxembourg and the rest of Europe. But what about us here in the United States? What do these new rules mean for the way we will interact online?

Approved by the European Parliament in 2022, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/22/european-lawmakers-digital-services/" target=_blank>Digital Services Act</a> (DSA) is a regulation meant to keep consumers safe online as they interact with the platforms and marketplaces that make up the modern web.

How? By forcing the companies behind those platforms and marketplaces to be more transparent about how content or products are algorithmically recommended, and ensuring they “mitigate” the spread of disinformation, offer ways for users to flag “illegal” content and more.

But to some researchers, there’s one thing regular users should especially be aware of.

“The big picture I think internet users should care about is that it’s a law about how platforms moderate online speech, and it puts a whole lot of new procedural protections in place for users when platforms remove or demote their posts,” said Daphne Keller, director of the platform regulation program at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center.

Also part of the DSA rules: Companies affected have to commission an independent audit to check for compliance once a year. Should any of them fail to live up to the DSA’s many requirements, they could be made to shell out fines equivalent to 6 percent of their global revenue.

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For now, mostly “very large online platforms” with more than 45 million users in the European Union.

The <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_23_2413" target=_blank>full list of platforms and search engines</a> required to comply with the DSA includes 19 names, many of which are usual suspects: Amazon, Apple’s App Store, Bing, Google Search, LinkedIn, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.)

But also on the list are more regional names like Zalando, an online retailer based in Berlin that filed a legal action against the European Commission earlier this summer contesting the “very large online platform” label.

Either way, those names are just the start.

Smaller companies — including “intermediaries” like internet access providers and web-hosting services — will have to abide by the DSA, too, but they have a shorter list of requirements to contend with and more time to meet them.

What do users in Europe get from all of this?

For one, they will get access to features and settings that — at least for now — are nowhere to be found in the United States.

Consider your social media experience: Companies such as Meta and TikTok have started to offer European users the option of a non-customized feed, rather than one based on what the platform thinks you want to see.

“For example, on Facebook and Instagram, users will have the option to view Stories and Reels only from people they follow, ranked in chronological order, newest to oldest,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, wrote <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2023/08/new-features-and-additional-transparency-measures-as-the-digital-services-act-comes-into-effect/" target=_blank>last week.</a> “They will also be able to view search results based only on the words they enter.”

They will also get additional tools across different platforms for reporting fraudulent items for sale online, as well as to flag “illegal” content.

In some cases, what’s more important is what consumers in Europe <i>won’t</i> get. <a href="https://newsroom.snap.com/digital-services-act-snap" target="_blank">Snapchat</a> and <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-eu/fulfilling-commitments-dsa-update" target="_blank">TikTok</a> users under the age of 18, for example, will no longer receive personalized advertisements inside the apps.

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If you live in the United States, probably not much — at first, anyway. This legislation is, after all, designed to benefit consumers across the pond.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be trickle-down effects.

Many of the companies affected are based in the United States, and among the many provisions of the DSA are rules mandating heightened transparency from the companies that shape the way we use the web. Between annual external audits and a mandate to grant vetted researchers access to platform data, Keller said there are quite a few methods to “get previously secret information out into public hands or the hands of regulators.”

“I think that will affect the whole world,” she added. “We’ll all just understand more about what’s going on, and lawmakers will be able to make better choices, and plaintiffs will be able to bring better claims.”

It’s also possible that companies that have developed specific tools and features to comply with the DSA in Europe could make them available elsewhere. That’s not as outlandish as it sounds: When working to make its products and services compliant with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Microsoft decided to also extend those protections and tools to all of its customers.

“The key is that the DSA may well change the expectations of U.S. users and regulators,” said Anu Bradford, co-director of the European Legal Studies Center at Columbia University Law School. “That may force U.S. tech companies — in the medium to long term — to extend the new protections they offer in the E.U. also to U.S. users.”

More than that, though, researchers think the DSA could help back up U.S. lawmakers as they attempt to impose tighter controls on Big Tech firms domestically.

“The E.U. law also offers a clear template for Congress and advocates for regulation: Tech companies can be regulated and are being regulated elsewhere,” Bradford said.

Whether lawmakers will put aside partisan differences to follow that template is another story.

“Democrats want platforms to take down more speech, and Republicans want them to take down less speech,” Keller said. But even though lawmakers on both sides of the aisle “can’t agree on what they want,” Keller said she believes the DSA could offer them ways to find common ground.

“The DSA isn’t about restricting new speech; it leaves the exact same legal rules and platform rules that were there all along,” she said. “It’s just about creating transparency and appeals and processes so the rules get enforced fairly and consistently. So if they wanted something to find common ground on, they could emulate these user procedural rights.”

Rutgers University-Camden, BA in English

Chris Velazco covers the technology that shapes people's lives, and offers advice on how best to grapple with it. 

Chris Velazco

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