DSA Article 21 provides for the establishment of Out of Court Dispute Settlement Bodies (DSBs). Designated by the Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs) of each Member State, DSBs are independent organisations that hold platforms accountable for their moderation decisions and provide users with an extra layer of recourse in their dealings with platforms.
We recently completed one of our first projects in standing up a process and operations for DSA Article 21 for a leading VLOP. It is one of the most novel and exciting provisions of the DSA, and putting it into operation brought up a range of new challenges in process and policy.
We had to solve for the following:
- dispute intake process
- dispute investigation
- facilitating review of content by DSBs
- review and implementation of DSB decisions
- transparency readiness
- tooling
I expound further on each of these challenges below:
Dispute intake process
There are many options here for dispute intake with pros and cons for each. Email is simple but can be easily abused by spammers. Vetted email intake is also an option, although it precludes newly established DSBs from making contact. A further option is to develop an intake portal, although that requires greater technical uplift and more hands-on onboarding of DSBs.
Dispute investigation
Users are obliged to make good faith reports, and that is mostly the case. It’s still important for T&S teams to corroborate the facts, establish the history of the content, what moderation action was applied, when, why and how. Platforms need to do their own due diligence as to whether they applied their own policies correctly or not.
Facilitating review of content by DSBs
Part of a DSB’s mandate is to issue decisions on disputes, so they need to be able to review the content at issue. This could involve sharing the content externally, or providing a DSB access to internal tools. Either option brings challenges around data security and user privacy, so close collaboration with Privacy and Infosec teams is essential.
Review and implementation of DSB decisions
DSB decisions are non-binding so in theory platforms could refuse to implement all DSB decisions. In reality, platforms must display good faith and due diligence in handling these disputes. It is important to define under what circumstances a DSB decision might be implemented, for what reasons, and who needs to sign off.
Transparency readiness
DSA Article 21 is subject to Transparency Reporting requirements. Platforms should set up from the outset to record the number of disputes that they receive, the median time taken to resolve disputes, and the outcome of each dispute. Robust data recording and tracking is essential here.
Tooling roadmap
Tooling questions arise at almost every step of the process: receiving the dispute from the DSB, investigating the user’s claims and the history of the content, facilitating review, implementing decisions, along with robust data analytics for each step of the process. As a general rule, the simpler and more consolidated, the easier and more efficient all of these steps are. The sheer novelty of the DSB process means that there are great opportunities for enhancements in the years ahead.
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