(New York, N.Y.) —The draft Digital Services Act (DSA), published by the EU Commission in December 2020, seeks to build a safer and better Internet for all EU citizens. Unfortunately, despite introducing some promising new elements like transparency and auditing requirements, the draft potentially falls short of its main objective.
Research highlights that the harmful effects of many social media and video sharing platforms, particularly in the form of hate speech and illegal (terrorist) content, are systemic and cannot be characterized as unintended consequences of an otherwise healthy business model.
Margrethe Vestager, EU Commissioner for the Digital Age, has described large tech companies as “threats to democracy and anticompetitive,” and at the same time, big tech’s lobby groups are welcoming the draft legislation. In particular, the tech industry has lauded the proposed legislation’s continuation of the limited liability privilege, which essentially allows companies to moderate harmful and illegal user content any way they deem fit without being liable. The proposed compliance and content moderation framework lacks procedural clarity and ignores major lessons learned from the German NetzDG law as well as from (failed) auditing/compliance systems from the financial sector.
At this online event, we will examine in depth the positive and negative aspects of the draft DSA. The discussion will focus on the question if this legislation will be capable of protecting EU citizens better from online harms.
The webinar will be held in English via Zoom on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, at 09:00 a.m. ET / 15:00 CEST.
EVENT AGENDA:
Opening remarks by Lucinda Creighton, Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) in Europe.
Panelists:
Alexander Ritzmann, Senior Advisor, Counter Extremism Project (CEP)
Paul Nemitz, Principal Advisor, European Commission, Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers
Josephine Ballon, Head of Legal, HateAid
Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, Senior Director, Counter Extremism Project (CEP)
The event will be moderated by Hanna Gleiß of Das NETTZ (networking initiative against hate speech, betterplace lab)
Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the issues with the speakers following their respective presentations in Q&A segments. Please feel free to share this invitation with colleagues.
To participate in this webinar, please register via the following link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RbmpXzJtSJSpTAfmjwlHLw
In the context of the EU Commission´s consultation process CEP, Das NETTZ and HateAid have contributed written statements.