2y ago

What are your thoughts on the new EU Digital Services Act?

From a first perspective it actually looks good! I think these kind of regulation were really needed. But i would like to hear your opinions!

13 comments

I think it's the first law that companies will take seriously as it has % penalty instead of traditional "part of doing business" fine.
- GDPR has that, too
  
  But GDPR had severe loopholes. Like not forcing a reject all cookie button
  
  GDPR has either up to € or %.
- The fines in the DSA are enormous: up to 6% of WORLDWIDE turnover.
I can only hope a similar law passes elsewhere or devices that comply with them are easily importable.
There's some good stuff in there and it's easy to cheer for some big new regulatory burdens being put on Google and Facebook, but it's slightly chilling to think what it'd be like if they eventually try to apply it to the fediverse. It sets up teams of what it calls "trusted flaggers" for example, whose job it will be to scour the net for anything they believe to be "illegal content" and order it removed. I imagine they'd start with places like c/piracy, but once such a vast apparatus for net censorship is set up who knows where else it might start looking. They'll use it to go after sellers of "counterfeit" goods as well. Imagine your instance admins being forced to go through some kind of appeals process to take down posts they don't like, but being required to instantly take down posts the government doesn't like.
I don't know, it's pretty complicated but there are some reasons to be slightly worried about it I guess.

13 comments