---
Article 19, Trusted flaggers
2.
The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established, where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions:
(a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content;
(b) it represents collective interests and is independent from any online platform;
(c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner.
---
on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act) and amending Directive 2000/31/EC
(50)
To ensure an efficient and adequate application of that obligation, without imposing any disproportionate burdens, the online platforms covered should make reasonable efforts to verify the reliability of the information provided by the traders concerned, in particular by using freely available official online databases and online interfaces, such as national trade registers and the VAT Information Exchange System, or by requesting the traders concerned to provide trustworthy supporting documents, such as copies of identity documents, certified bank statements, company certificates and trade register certificates. They may also use other sources, available for use at a distance, which offer a similar degree of reliability for the purpose of complying with this obligation. However, the online platforms covered should not be required to engage in excessive or costly online fact-finding exercises or to carry out verifications on the spot. Nor should such online platforms, which have made the reasonable efforts required by this Regulation, be understood as guaranteeing the reliability of the information towards consumer or other interested parties.
---
Not sure about your third point yet, I've only briefly jumped around in the (lengthy) full text.
Despite this, the IWF might be one of the more reputable "trusted flaggers", and this system may open the door for far worse ones to enter into the scene.
That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very carefully, but now we're elevating some specific people to be 'more equal' than others? Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I can see that opening a can of worms.
I don't live in the EU, but just like that well intentioned but shortsighted cookie law, the rest of us will have to deal with the fallout of that for a long time to come.
This costs nothing on the corporate expense sheets, but makes the society increasingly more toxic.
Yes, they were first but now they are strangling everybody.
And this is not only true for EU, same goes for USA. Someone will have to do something about it but with the power of home lobbying I dont believe that the States will do anything meaningful. On the other side, EU needs to protect its market.
As for who is a trusted flagger: "The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content; (b) it represents collective interests and is independent from any online platform; (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner. "
I.E. if you can convince your local government that you should be one, bam you are one, and online platform the EU needs to expedite processing of any notices you make.
On the other end of the spectrum, the companies are required to allow you to appeal takedowns and account suspensions/terminations (for TOS or illegal content reasons, not for non-payment reasons) for a 6 month period. Further, if you appeal a takedown or account suspension and the company rejects your appeal, the law will allow you to take the matter to binding arbitration. If the user wins, the company pays all costs, and must reinstate the content or account. If the user loses, they only pay their portion of arbitration costs. (The company's portion are just part of doing business in the EU).
Well, who are the people that censor all other kinds of media? As far as I know movies are censored (Motion Picture Production Code, Motion Picture Association film rating system), music is censored (Parental Advisories), TV is censored (TV station licenses), radio (radio station licenses) is censored, news paper are censored (I can't find the exact reference).
The roof hasn't fallen because of existing censorship, or am I missing something?
To the extent they are incorporated with schemes that limit access to the rated content imposed by powerful entities outside of the transaction, they are part of schemes of censorship. (Public censorship schemes that incorporate movie ratings, and thus delegate to movie raters the role of public censor, are common.)
> I'm not going to argue that censoring broadcast is ideal or valid, but I'm certainly less sympathetic to the plight of massive media companies than I am to millions of private citizens.
Censorship by a third party equally impacts the rights of the parties on both sides of a potential transaction; broadcast media censorship restricts the freedom of both massive media companies and millions of private citizens.
No doubt they are part of "schemes of censorship" in some literal sense, but if someone publishes a rating and another chooses to use that rating as the basis of censorship, the onus is still squarely on the part of the censor and not the rater.
> Censorship by a third party equally impacts the rights of the parties on both sides of a potential transaction; broadcast media censorship restricts the freedom of both massive media companies and millions of private citizens.
You're conflating several things. Yes, censorship by a third party has similar effects to government censorship, but we treat them differently because the government is a special entity (ultimately because it enjoys a monopoly on violence and force). There are legitimate questions about when a third party becomes so powerful that it can unilaterally affect government (as with social media companies being a vector for the manipulation of elections), but this is the purview of anti-trust as I understand it (and I strongly support anti-trust action against social media corporations for precisely this reason).
The other conflated issues are "freedom to speak" vs "freedom to hear". Yes, restrictions on the content of broadcast media corporations limits the "freedom to hear" of millions of citizens as it does with restrictions on social media; however, restricting social media also infringes on millions' freedoms to speak.
Indeed, when you consider that the volume of communication in a social media network is combinatorial, the impact on regulations is far greater than for restrictions on traditional broadcast media.
My post was discussing whether censorship occurred and whose freedom was affected. While it did mention certain explictly public schemes, it nowhere argued that other schemes should be treated as government censorship, so you are inventing a position here for the sole purpose of claiming it is in error and a conflation of different things.
> My post was discussing whether censorship occurred and whose freedom was affected. While it did mention certain explictly public schemes, it nowhere argued that other schemes should be treated as government censorship, so you are inventing a position here for the sole purpose of claiming it is in error and a conflation of different things.
You brought up the 'third party vs government' dynamic; I was merely mentioning that it's distinct from the dynamic of 'freedom to speak' vs 'freedom to hear'. I specifically never claimed that you were arguing that we should treat third parties the same as the government. No need to speculate about my motives.
No, “third-party” contrasts with the parties involved in the transaction (mostly the source, which may exercise self-censorship, which does not restrict the freedom of the participants the way third-party censorship does.)
The government would be an example of a third-party censor, not something distinct from it.
And yet I consider restricting access to educative LGBT+ films under the banner of "18+" to be censorship
Similarly, I don't think your local theater's prohibition on minors viewing 'adult' content compares favorably to a large social media company which steers and manipulates so much communication that it can unilaterally sway national elections. The latter is an issue of national sovereignty.
True, calling them censorship is kind of stretching the definition.
But there's still a small group of people that decide those ratings and the commercial impact of those ratings, as far as I know, is massive.
So it's not direct censorship, but it still has a "chilling effect".
There are some very real problems with unfettered access to communication, and I don't think we've solved them yet. I am very concerned that this law will have a range of unintended negative consequences, and I don't think defending our existing (flawed) structure really proves that it'll all be fine.
Specifically we're talking about moving from a model of centralized media control (eg: media companies and the conglomerates that own them) to one where a select group of people get to manage the filtering of content on the largest platforms. That seems like something that will be almost impossible to manage properly, and ripe for (at a minimum) political manipulation.
"The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content; (b) it represents collective interests and is independent from any online platform; (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner."
edit: Yeah, NGOs and also MPAA/RIAA style associations will probably be the most common entities.
I could be wrong though.
We're still early doors on this, but presumably the legislation when it's written will have more details.
But based on how most other regulation in the EU is handled, and thinking of how these questions are handled in the banking industry, I assume the company gets to decide. But the company will be expect to demonstrate to regulators that their content guidelines are:
1. A a minimum restrict illegal content, already defined in law
2. Don't discriminate against protected classes
3. Are fair, along with an explanation of why they're fair
4. There are policies and procedures that ensure they're applied fairly (again with explanation of why it's fair), and there's evidence they're actually being followed.
I expect that there will be significant latitude for regulators to decide what level of evidence is required, and how you demonstrate fairness. After all no one really know how to do this, so it doesn't make sense to write prescriptive detailed laws which are guaranteed to wrong. The different regulators will end up converging on a common understanding, if the don't, then expect the EU to setup a super regulator or similar to force greater convergence.
As for the standard argument of "oh but then how am I meant to know what to do" etc
1. Regulators will publish guidelines
2. Regulators will work with companies to make sure everyone agrees nothing draconian is happening, and equally make sure companies don't get off scot free.
3. Regulators won't punish companies that are clearly making a best effort attempt to follow the spirit of the law.
4. The EU has plenty of expertise doing this, look at financial regulation, GDPR etc No one who's actually had to follow tricky EU regulation before is worrying about this, unless it looks like the regulation basically outlaws their business.
> Hopefully this authentication mechanism can be inexpensive such that it doesn't disenfranchise too much legitimate business at the small end of the spectrum;
You'll be glad to hear it basically already exists in the EU. Open banking will make this process so much easier. Amazon will be able to lean on banks to handle some of this process, rather than building from scratch, with Open banking providing unified APIs to connect to almost any bank in the EU. And talking as someone whos help build bank grade Know Your Customer and Know Your Business processes and systems, it's much easier than you think (not easy, but Amazon won't struggle). Not to mention there's a flourishing industry of tech companies already solving these problems for FinTechs.
> I'm really wary of "disinformation that could sway elections" and "unjustified targeting of minority groups"; how do you litigate these fairly? One person's "racial advocacy" is another person's "racial patronization". These seem super subjective and thus ripe for abuse. Hopefully this too is just a case of poor journalism and the legislation is better.
As with the "trusted flaggers" above, I expect there to be quite a lot of latitude for regulators to decide. With your specific example, entities like the European Court of Human Rights will be the ultimate backstop for preventing abuse. It may take 5-10 years for all the court cases to be raised and litigated to that level, but it'll happen. The EU has good track record of balancing these concerns, and providing the legal infrastructure to allow these thing to be litigated. No doubt it'll figure it out, just like its done plenty of times before.
The actual legislation text (i.e. skipping the recitals) starts on page 43. "problems" here consists of reported illegal content, whether copyright violation or child porn. The legislation is basically an enhanced EU version of DCMA's safe harbor system, but with a focus on all illegal content, not just copyright infringement, and with more ability of the company to reject clearly invalid notices.
Who determines which problems are valid? Unless I overlooked something, this article seems really vague.
> Likewise, all online stores must be able to trace traders selling goods via their platforms, in case they are offering counterfeit items or other illegal products. "[It] will require online marketplaces to check their sellers' identity before they are allowed on the platform, which will make it so much more difficult for dodgy traders to do their business," commented Mr Breton.
I'm excited about the crackdown on counterfeit products, but I also wonder if it will raise the barrier of entry for sellers (if Amazon has to spend money to validate a given seller, why should they do business with smaller sellers?). Hopefully this authentication mechanism can be inexpensive such that it doesn't disenfranchise too much legitimate business at the small end of the spectrum; big players already enjoy tremendous regulatory advantages over smaller players--no need to compound it further.
> In addition, once a year they must publish a report into their handling of major risks, including users posting illegal content, disinformation that could sway elections, and the unjustified targeting of minority groups.
I'm really wary of "disinformation that could sway elections" and "unjustified targeting of minority groups"; how do you litigate these fairly? One person's "racial advocacy" is another person's "racial patronization". These seem super subjective and thus ripe for abuse. Hopefully this too is just a case of poor journalism and the legislation is better.