Open Letter to EU Policy-Makers: How the Digital Services Act (DSA) can Tackle Disinformation

According to the signatories, it is time to legislate on disinformation, as information disorders endanger our fundamental rights and there is the need for a greater platform accountability, especially for accountability for arbitrary actions and inactions by the platforms.

The internal complaint-handling system foreseen by the DSA (article 17) must allow individuals or entities to lodge a complaint if platforms do not take action to remove or disable access to a piece of content. Similarly, the text should ensure individuals or entities can invoke not only the illegality of the content but also an incompatibility with the terms & conditions of the provider of the hosting service when submitting a notice (art. 14) for the piece of content that is to be taken down.

There is also the need for meaningful transparency, and for more democratic oversight, in order to ensure civil society and journalists can qualify as vetted researchers in order to access platform data.

The signatories are asking to establish a European Oversight Board as an independent and well-resourced body to oversee implementation of the DSA with experts drawn from civil society.

The letter can be found here .

This content is part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response  (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States and Candidate Countries. The project is co-funded by the European Commission.