The European Union has created the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Two laws to better protect users and consumers on the internet.
Digital platforms have become very important agents in our daily lives. Today we communicate, buy, search for information or consume audiovisual content through our digital devices.
However, this rapid technological development has not been accompanied by a common regulatory framework that guarantees the protection of users and, in turn, favors the creation of an egalitarian ecosystem in which new digital services emerge.
To change this situation, the European Union created the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Both laws are a set of rules that better protect consumers and their fundamental rights on the internet; establish a strong and clear transparency and accountability framework; and drive innovation, growth and competitiveness in the single market. In this way, all digital actors offering services in the single market, whether established in the EU or outside the EU, will have to comply with the new rules.
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A safe space for users
Today, digital platforms can be misused to disseminate illegal content or sell illegal services and products. The new Digital Services Act makes it possible to report illegal content, goods or services in a clear and simple manner; ensures that platforms have due diligence obligations where the most serious damage occurs; and finally, it equips the authorities so that they can protect citizens by monitoring platforms and joint action of standards across the Union.
Thanks to the new law, users have to be informed of the deletion of content by the platforms, being able to oppose them. They will have greater security and better knowledge of the actual sellers of products that users buy, as well as new protections for minors, among many other measures.
Obligations for EU-wide ‘Access Guards’
Gatekeepers are those great platforms that accumulate great economic power and have a great influence in the world. To this day, they carry out their activities in an unregulated way or with standards that predate the digital economy.
The Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act ensure, inter alia, wide-ranging transparency, including of the algorithms used by recommendation; enable consumers to identify illegal content, goods or services; and it will establish codes of conduct and technical standards to help platforms comply with the new standards.
Expansion of innovative digital platforms in the EU
Currently, companies engaged in digital services in the European Union have to deal with 27 different national regulations.
The new Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act ensure that the same rules are applied across the Union and that the basis for a large internal market is built so that new and innovative digital services can be developed.
The changes in the new regulation also seek to create a fairer and more balanced market. To this end, it guarantees the opening of new opportunities for companies, which will be able to compete with the large platforms on an equal footing. In addition, companies will no longer be able to be blocked by gatekeepers.
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