Digital Services Act (DSA)

The DSA governs how online intermediaries and platforms, from marketplaces to social networks and search engines, handle illegal content, moderation, transparency and risk. It has applied to the largest services, designated as very large online platforms or search engines, since August 2023 and to all covered services since February 2024.

Its advertising rules include: every ad must be clearly labelled, with information on who is advertising, who paid, and the main parameters used to target it; platforms may not show ads based on profiling that uses special categories of data such as health, religion or sexual orientation; and platforms may not show profiling-based ads to users they know with reasonable certainty are minors. Very large platforms must also keep public, searchable ad repositories and assess systemic risks, including from advertising systems.

Fines can reach 6% of global annual turnover. The DSA complements the Digital Markets Act, which addresses gatekeeper market power, and GDPR, which covers personal data generally.

Think of it like this

The DSA is like consumer protection rules for a giant shopping centre: every stall must be labelled, some sales tactics are banned, and the biggest landlords must keep public records.

An example

A user in the Netherlands clicks "why am I seeing this ad?" on a social platform and sees that the ad was paid for by a sportswear brand and targeted to adults aged 25 to 40 interested in running; the ad also appears in the platform's public ad library.