Mitigating harmful content on social media via platform regulation: The Digital Services Act and content assessment

Lendvai, Gergely Ferenc and Papp, János Tamás and Gosztonyi, Gergely (2025) Mitigating harmful content on social media via platform regulation: The Digital Services Act and content assessment. INFORMÁCIÓS TÁRSADALOM: TÁRSADALOMTUDOMÁNYI FOLYÓIRAT, 25 (2). pp. 59-72. ISSN 1587-8694

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Abstract

The Digital Services Act (DSA) implements a legal framework for digital services, including social media platforms, to ensure that they operate in responsible, accountable ways. With an objective involving three critical theoretical pillars—transparency, accountability, and responsibility—the DSA, among other functions, (mostly) holds online platforms liable for content that they publish and also imposes requirements that they mitigate and remove harmful content. However, from a critical standpoint, the DSA begs some pivotal questions. For one, how can such a legal document, even if binding, mitigate the severe societal, psychological, emotional, and even physical dangers and detriments experienced by victims of social media abuse? For another, how can a supranational regulation combat local disinformation campaigns and political propaganda? In this article, we encourage not only introducing, analyzing, and critically examining the DSA but also propose policy recommendations to ameliorate content moderation on social media platforms.

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