DSA
A cited EU Digital Services Act hub for intermediary-service scope, notice and action, statements of reasons, transparency reports, ads, recommenders, trader traceability, duties, and enforcement.
This DSA hub helps decide whether a particular service is in scope, classify its intermediary tier, and find the duties that follow for hosting, platform, marketplace, search, and designated very-large-service features.
The DSA has applied generally since 17 February 2024. It applies service by service to offered to recipients in the EU, regardless of where the provider is established. Mere technical accessibility from the EU is not enough by itself: document establishment, targeting, or significant EU use before assigning duties. supervise providers established in their Member State, while the Commission has the DSA's specified powers for VLOPs and VLOSEs.
The DSA covers intermediary functions that transmit, temporarily store, or host recipient-provided information when offered to recipients in the EU. A non-EU provider needs a substantial EU connection, such as establishment, significant recipient use, or targeting. Mere technical accessibility is insufficient. Classify each service surface separately; the same product can contain several DSA tiers, and voluntary good-faith moderation does not by itself remove an Article 4-6 liability exemption.
Hosting and platform teams need operational records for Article 16 notices, Article 17 statements of reasons, Article 15 transparency reports, Article 24 user numbers, Article 26 ads, Article 27 recommenders, and Article 30 trader traceability where relevant.
Designated services at or above 45 million average monthly active EU recipients must handle systemic-risk assessment and mitigation, annual independent audits, researcher and regulator data access, non-profiling recommender options, and searchable ad repositories.
Start with the function performed for recipients: mere conduit, caching, or hosting. Then test whether the service is an through public dissemination, whether it supports marketplace distance-contract flows or online search, and whether enterprise-size exclusions, EU recipient counts, or Commission designation change the obligation set. Keep the conditional liability exemptions in Articles 4-6 separate from the due-diligence duties that apply to the classified service.
Map notice and action, trusted-flagger priority, each , internal complaints, out-of-court dispute links, repeat-abuse suspension, and transparency reporting.
Publishing at least 45 million average monthly active EU recipients does not itself complete designation. Track the Commission decision and notification date because the enhanced duties attach to the designated service on its four-month application clock.
Use the DSA milestones for regulation application, designation effects, average monthly active recipient publication, transparency-reporting templates, audit outputs, and enforcement events only where the source material supports the date and affected service category.
New to the DSA? Start by classifying one service and its EU connection. If that record already exists, jump to the operating duty, disclosure, very-large-service control, enforcement question, or comparison you need.
Decide whether the DSA applies to the service, then separate mere conduit, caching, hosting, platform, marketplace, search, and Commission-designated layers.
Map the tier result into notice handling, moderation decisions, statements of reasons, internal complaints, dispute routes, operating controls, and retained evidence.
Review user-facing design and data flows for ads, recommenders, minors, manipulative interfaces, and trader or product traceability where the relevant platform layer applies.
Separate fixed application dates, event-driven statement submissions, six-month user-number updates, annual or reporting cycles, and template transition rules.
For a Commission-designated service, connect systemic-risk work to mitigation, independent audit, data access, governance, and crisis-response evidence.
Understand the different roles of and the Commission, the relevant investigation powers, and the conditions behind penalty caps.
Keep the DSA distinct from the DMA, GDPR, P2B Regulation, Terrorist Content Online Regulation, and UK Online Safety Act, or go directly to a concise DSA answer.
"laying down templates concerning the transparency reporting obligations of providers of intermediary services"
"These services include marketplaces, social media networks, app stores, and online travel and accommodation platforms."
"The enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA) includes a full set of investigative and sanctioning measures"
"all providers of intermediary services will have to make reports on their content moderation publicly available"
"Very large online platforms and search engines are those with over 45 million users in the EU."
"Providers of hosting services shall put mechanisms in place to allow any individual or entity to notify them"
Next steps
Confirm the service tier first, then assign article-level work to trust and safety, policy, legal, marketplace, ads, recommender, data, reporting, and engineering owners who can change the service and maintain the public evidence.
Turn DSA scope, Article 16-17 moderation, reporting, marketplace, ads, recommender, and questions into owned tasks and evidence requests.
Answer DSA scope, user-number, notice, statement-of-reasons, transparency, trader, , audit, and enforcement questions with cited outputs.
Coordinate DSA applicability, designation, reporting, audit, and enforcement milestones across teams.
Review service classification, article-level controls, public disclosures, readiness, and enforcement evidence.