The European Parliament adopted its position on Thursday on the draft legislation on digital services, a text which should make it possible to better regulate the operation of platforms and to ban illegal content online.
MEPs voted, 530 votes to 78 (and 80 abstentions), in favor of an amended version of
the
"
Digital Services Act
", a text presented in December 2020 by the Commission European Union, which they have supplemented in certain aspects.
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“
We are regaining control over the internet giants
,” rejoiced the text's rapporteur, MEP Christel Schaldemose (Socialists and Democrats group), during the debate on this text on Wednesday.
“
With the DSA, we are going to lead a fundamental fight against the far west that the digital world has become
”.
“
The lack of control over the decisions of a handful of large platforms was no longer tolerable
,” added Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market.
“
We are going to create an innovative system, with a simple principle: everything that is prohibited offline is prohibited online
”.
Transparency and better moderation
This draft legislation must modernize the European regulations applicable to digital services, which date from 2000, a time when social networks and smartphones did not exist.
The text aims to force giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon to tackle illegal content (incitement to hatred, disinformation, etc.) and to control the goods sold on their platforms (counterfeits, dangerous products, etc.).
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It also imposes “
enhanced transparency
” on the algorithms used by these platforms.
It also plans to introduce safeguards to identify sexual abuse or images disseminated without the consent of individuals in pornographic content disseminated by users on platforms.
Companies that violate these provisions may be fined up to 6% of their annual turnover.
Opening of trialogues
MEPs supplemented the Commission's text to end the collection of data used for the purpose of targeting minors or vulnerable people, or introduce a compensation procedure for users harmed by platforms.
After the vote on the text in the European Parliament, a delicate phase of negotiations now begins with the Member States, in order to arrive at a final version of the text which will again be submitted to the vote of MEPs.
"
The battle is not over
," reacted the Green MEP David Cormand.
"
We need to be more ambitious when it comes to tackling Big Tech's manipulative algorithms and divisive business models
," he added, calling for a more protective text.