KUALA LUMPUR – European Union (EU) member states must hasten steps to enforce the Digital Services Act (DSA), aimed at dealing with illegal content and misinformation in the wake of the Israel-Palestine war.
The European Parliament on October 18 adopted a resolution for member states to expedite the set up of respective authorities to enforce the DSA, and not wait for the February 2024 deadline.
EU commissioner Thierry Breton announced the resolution in a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying: “Today we adopt a recommendation to member states to fast-track DSA coordination & an incident protocol”.
He added that he was fully committed to accelerating the fight against “illegal and terrorist content on social media”.
The DSA is an EU law that will make social media platforms responsible for dealing with misinformation distorted views.
Breton made the call for speedier enforcement following the flood of unverified content about the violence between Israel and Hamas on online platforms.
His call at the European Parliament on Wednesday was for member states to be quicker about setting up the authority responsible for enforcing the DSA, the Euractiv website said.
“We cannot wait until February 17, 2024, when the European Digital Services Committee will be set up, to talk to each other and work together,” Euractiv quoted him as saying at the Parliament, referring to the committee under the DSA which will assist the European Commission.
EU earlier this week warned Meta, TikTok and X to urgently hasten efforts to comply with the DSA, demanding proof of how each platform is taking action.
The EU introduced new laws in August 2023 which regulate the kind of content that is allowed online.
The DSA requires so-called “very large online platforms” to proactively remove “illegal content”, and show they have taken measures to do so if requested.
The DSA allows the EU to conduct interviews and inspections and, if it is unsatisfied, proceed to a formal investigation.
If it decides that a platform has not complied or is not addressing the problems it has identified, and risks harming users, the commission can take more drastic steps.
This can include a heavy fine, and as a last resort it can even request judges ban the platform from the EU temporarily. – October 20, 2023