Blog: 27.04.23

DSA: A major change for Trust and Safety teams

On April 25, 2023, the European Commission's Digital Services Act published a historical designation of 17 "very large online platforms" (VLOPs) and "very large online search engines" (VLOSEs). Platforms range from social media platforms to shopping platforms, app stores, video hosting services, etc.
Platforms have four months to comply with the DSA's new obligations. These obligations are meant to further “empower and protect” users, especially minors. Some of these obligations require platforms to rethink how they operate to better protect user data and mitigate risk, and many of them also focus on improving content moderation efforts.

The obligations are sweeping, requiring platforms to:

Limit targeted advertising to children.
Carry out special risk assessments for mental health.
Redesign their user interfaces, systems and algorithms.
Label ads and inform users about how their data is being used.
Create reporting mechanisms for illegal content.

Platforms are likely to face the most investment requirements with regards to the new content moderation obligations.

What do the new obligations say about content moderation?

Platforms must take measures to “address risks linked to the dissemination of illegal content online and to negative effects on freedom of expression and information”.
Platforms must also ensure that they have on-platform mechanisms for users to flag illegal content, and action these alerts “expeditiously”.

Content moderation solutions currently available focus on AI-based content moderation of malicious or illegal content, and these can be crucial for ensuring regulation compliance on platforms.
Most cases, however, require escalation to Tier-2 analysts for deeper investigation, decision-making, and even law enforcement reporting. Since many of these cases are more sensitive and time-consuming, analysts need an automated, flexible, yet secure system that empowers them to generate reports within a short period of time.

This is where Falkor comes in. Falkor is a data-driven analytics, knowledge management and investigation platform that empowers analysts to run flexible, collaborative, dynamic, secure and regulation-compliant investigations. Made for the modern analyst.

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