The European Union’s latest internet regulations are aggressively trying to set the standard for how technology companies handle speech online, and it may have far-reaching implications that stretch to the United States.
The EU enacted the Digital Services Act on Friday, a law considered one of the most thorough pieces of legislation to date regarding Big Tech. Passed alongside its sister bill, the antitrust-focused Digital Markets Act, the DSA sets several guidelines for how technology platforms such as Meta, Google, and Amazon must handle speech, transparency, and a user’s data. While the laws are designed to help Europe specifically, their effects may be felt in the U.S. and across the globe as regulations increase.
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“The Europeans are trying to become the Big Tech companies’ regulatory overlords,” Shane Tews, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner.
The DSA was passed in Sept. 2022 by the EU’s legislature as a serious step up for internet regulations. The regulations ban targeted advertising aimed toward children and using sensitive data involving one’s ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. It also holds tech companies accountable for “harmful and illegal” content, requires them to be more transparent about their content moderation and algorithms, and strengthens the tracing of traders on online marketplaces.
The new rules named 19 companies as being affected by the DSA.
“In a nutshell, all the services you would use on a typical day are in the group of designated entities. And they are the ones that have more than 45 million active users in the European Union,” an EU official said in Brussels at a press briefing on Thursday. The named platforms include Meta, X (the website previously called Twitter), Instagram, Wikipedia, Amazon, and several of Google’s platforms.
Big Tech companies have adapted to the demands of the DSA, including adding new modes to allow users variety, required transparency efforts, and testing the companies’ ability to respond to requests to quell misinformation on the platform. Platforms are now required to remove content related to “disinformation or election manipulation, cyber violence against women, or harms to minors” online, according to the DSA. While the U.S. government often works with platforms to combat this sort of content, it has not implemented a ban on it beyond restrictions on child sexual assault material.
It would be difficult for a platform to remove content region-by-region based on speech policy alone without affecting other countries. “The internet is a borderless medium of communication for billions of people, and the DSA seeks to export a more censorious regime of regulations surrounding user-generated content, something that would never be allowed in the US because of our First Amendment,” James Czerniawski, a senior tech analyst at Americans for Prosperity, told the Washington Examiner.
There is also the matter of differing speech laws within the EU. France and Germany have more restrictive hate speech laws than some of its neighbors. Balancing the concerns of one nation over the other becomes a complicated affair on its own. Failure to comply with these restrictions could lead to the company paying up to 6% of annual worldwide turnover.
“The European Union’s commitment to enforcing the DSA has the potential to result in less speech online around the world, including here at home. U.S. companies, rather than face the increased regulatory scrutiny and potential fines, will likely implement universal guidelines that will be more restrictive on user speech as a result,” Czerniawski said.
The EU frames the policies as an expansion of its priorities worldwide. The DSA is “bringing our European values into the digital world,” President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said. Others viewed this law as an unnecessary expansion of regulators. “The only thing that Europe is exporting these days is regulation,” Tews said.
The restrictions could also affect product efforts. Tews noted Instagram Threads, which delayed its release in Europe due to uncertainties about how local regulators would interpret the presence of an X competitor in the marketplace, as an example. If large companies are required to abide by the DSA and the DMA, they may require additional time and resources to ensure they comply with the regulations.
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It’s unclear if products such as Meta’s chronological feed, created to abide by EU law, will be exported beyond European borders. Tech companies are no stranger to making product or policy decisions to fit a particular country, Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich told the Washington Examiner. Unless the company finds a demand outside of Europe, the former Google policy leader noted, it will likely remain there.
The DSA has not been well received by all companies. Amazon sued on July 11, saying it had been “unfairly singled out” by the regulations due to its size. The German online fashion retailer Zalando also filed suit, claiming “unequal treatment resulting from the absence of a clear and consistent methodology.”
