Salut la liste !

The big event of the month was definitely the political deal on the EU’s new content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act. There are a few new obligations in there for Wikimedia and we will take you through them. Next month we are also organising a Wikicheese event in Brussels. You may spread the word! 

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DIGITAL SERVICES ACT

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Weird procedure: The French Presidency of the Council wanted to get a deal done so badly, it pushed the Parliament and Member States to accept a “political deal” putting the main cornerstones in place. However, a “technical deal” is still being negotiated. Which means that a lot of details can still change, and details are important. This is a highly unusual procedure for Brussels. We expect the technical side to take another month and then a final DSA version to be voted on by Parliament in July. 

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Modération citoyenne: We welcome that during the deliberations  lawmakers began making a distinction between rules created and imposed by the services provider and rules written and applied by volunteer editing communities. It is a pity that “citizen moderation”, something the internet needs more of, wasn’t recognised explicitly. But the definitions and the articles make clear that the DSA is about the service provider activities and shall not interfere with community content moderation. 

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Positive safeguards: Further positive safeguards for intellectual freedom online  include a ban on targeted advertising using sensitive information and a ban on “dark patterns”.

We regret that the so-called “crisis mechanism”, a provision allowing the European Commission to ask very large platforms to tackle certain content in times of crisis, came as a last minute addition and was not properly publicly deliberated. Its safeguards remain vague.

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Crisis mechanism: A provision allowing the European Commission to ask very large platforms to tackle certain content in times of crisis, came as a last minute addition and was not properly publicly deliberated. Its safeguards remain vague, but together with civil society partners we managed to include a few: 

*A majority of Member States need to approve the mechanism; 

*All requests sent to platforms must be immediately public;

*A three month sunset clause;

*Fundamental rights and proportionality language;

*The way in which problematic content is tackled is with the service provider.

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Further reading: You are welcome to check out our analysis of the DSA result from a Wikimedia perspective. Else, you may also check EDRi’s rundown for a more general digital rights perspective. 

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WIKICHEESE BRUSSELS

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Cheese: Together with Wikimédia France and the French Digital Ambassador we are organising a Wikicheese apéro in Brussels. Fingerfood, drinks and of course we will be taking images of cheeses for Wikipedia. You can still register and come! Also, you may spread the word! 

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DENMARK

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Danish DSA?: the Danish government has put forth their own legislative proposal for the regulation of social media independent of the DSA. The gist of the law is that social media platforms, generally defined as platforms with the purpose of creating a profile and browsing other profiles and user-submitted content with over 80.000 yearly users in Denmark, will be obliged to take down illegal content within 24 hours of reporting, with two exceptions (7 days if a more thorough investigation of the content is required and even more in special circumstances). The law contains an almost verbatim copy of the encyclopedia carveout of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive. WMDK’s Matthias Smed Larsen is working on this and looking closely at four main issues: 

*The scope of the law and the carveout;

*The definition of illegal content;

*The general issue of a 24-hour limit creating an incentive to remove borderline content which is actually legal;

*How community content moderation fits into this. 

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