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For this FAQ, average monthly active recipients means the Article 24(2) user-number publication for an online platform or online search engine: information on the average monthly active recipients of the service in the Union, calculated as an average over the past six months.

The relevant population covers recipients in the Union and goes beyond registered accounts. Recital 77 treats recipients as active when they engage with the service at least once during the period, including by being exposed to information disseminated on an online platform, providing information for dissemination, or submitting a query to an online search engine. Consumers, traders, advertisers, and users who are not registered can therefore be relevant to the service-specific count.

The DSA does not prescribe one universal analytics query in Article 24. Providers should document how their data identifies active recipients in the Union, avoids unsupported precision, and produces a six-month average for the particular platform or search service.

Article 24(2) required covered providers to publish the first information by 17 February 2023 and to update it at least once every six months thereafter. The publication must be in a publicly available section of the online interface for each covered online platform or online search engine. Article 19 excludes qualifying micro and small online-platform providers from Article 24(2), subject to its post-loss and VLOP rules; Article 24(3) is expressly retained.

The publication duty is separate from authority-response duties. Under Article 24(3), the Digital Services Coordinator of establishment or the Commission may request the published information updated to the moment of the request, and may require additional calculation information, explanations, and substantiation about the data used.

Article 33 applies the very large online platform and very large online search engine regime to online platforms and online search engines with average monthly active recipients in the Union equal to or higher than 45 million, once designated by the Commission.

Designation is a Commission decision. The Commission can base the decision on Article 24(2) data reported by the provider, information requested under Article 24(3), or other information available to it. If designated, the additional VLOP/VLOSE obligations apply from four months after notification to the provider. The Commission terminates a designation if the service remains below the threshold for an uninterrupted period of one year.

The DSA does not require teams to publish their full internal calculation workbook on the public page. It does, however, let the Digital Services Coordinator of establishment and the Commission ask for explanations and substantiation about the calculation and the data used, without personal data.

A defensible evidence record should therefore explain the service boundary, the Union recipient population, the six-month averaging period, the data sources used, the assumptions applied, the publication location, and the authority-response owner. Keep methodology caveats visible in the evidence record rather than turning them into unsupported precision in the public copy.

Article 16 requires providers of hosting services to offer easy-to-access, user-friendly electronic mechanisms for notices about specific items of information that a person or entity considers illegal content.

Illegal content means information that is itself unlawful or is unlawful because it relates to an illegal activity, including the sale of products or provision of services that do not comply with EU law or Member State law consistent with EU law. A report alleging only that content violates platform terms is not an Article 16 illegal-content notice unless it also alleges illegality.

A notice gives rise to actual knowledge or awareness for the specific item only when it is precise and substantiated enough for a diligent hosting provider to identify the illegality without a detailed legal examination. That rule does not turn the notice mechanism into a general monitoring duty.

If the notice contains the notifier's electronic contact information, the hosting service must confirm receipt without undue delay and later notify the notifier of the decision on the reported information, including available redress routes.

If automated means are used for processing or decision-making, that use must be disclosed in the decision notification. If the provider restricts content because it is illegal or incompatible with terms, Article 17 may also require a clear and specific statement of reasons to the affected recipient. An Article 9 authority order to act against illegal content follows a separate DSA route and should not be processed as an ordinary Article 16 notice.

A trusted flagger notice is still submitted through the Article 16 mechanism, but Article 22 requires online platforms to give priority to notices from trusted flaggers acting within their designated area of expertise and to process and decide them without undue delay.

Trusted flagger status does not transfer the moderation decision to the flagger. The Commission explains that trusted flaggers notify platforms of content they consider illegal, while providers remain responsible for deciding on notices and removing content where justified.

For an online marketplace in scope of Article 30, first record whether Article 29 excludes the marketplace section because the provider qualifies as micro or small. Where Article 30 applies, a trader should not be able to promote messages about products or services, or offer products or services to consumers located in the Union, until the platform has obtained the required trader information.

The marketplace also has to make best efforts to assess whether the information is reliable and complete before the trader uses the service. That assessment can use freely accessible official databases or online interfaces made available by a Member State or the Union, or supporting documents from reliable sources requested from the trader.

Article 30 gave covered marketplaces 12 months from 17 February 2024 to obtain the required information from traders already using the service. That transition ended on 17 February 2025, so a covered marketplace should not treat a pre-existing trader as exempt from the current onboarding and maintenance control.

Article 30 separates internal collection from consumer-facing disclosure. The marketplace does not publish every collected item, but it must make the trader's name and contact information, trade-register information where applicable, and the trader's compliance self-certification available to recipients of the service in a clear, easily accessible, and comprehensible way.

The marketplace must make that information available on the online interface where the product or service is presented. Identification documents and payment-account details belong in the internal traceability record, not the Article 30(7) consumer disclosure.

If the marketplace has sufficient indications or reason to believe that Article 30 trader information is inaccurate, incomplete, or not up to date, it must ask the trader to remedy the problem without delay or within the period set by Union and national law.

If the trader does not correct or complete the information, the marketplace must swiftly suspend the service for that trader in relation to products or services offered to consumers located in the Union. A refusal or suspension decision also connects to the DSA complaint routes available to the trader.

Trader traceability should be implemented together with Article 31 marketplace interface controls. The interface must let traders provide required pre-contractual, compliance, and product safety information, including product or service identification, trader signs such as a trademark or logo, and applicable labelling and marking information.

After a trader is allowed to offer products or services, the marketplace must make reasonable efforts to randomly check official, freely accessible, machine-readable databases or interfaces to see whether offered products or services have been identified as illegal.

If the marketplace becomes aware that a trader offered an illegal product or service through the service, Article 32 covers consumers who bought it during the preceding six months. Where their contact details are available, the marketplace must inform them of the illegality, the trader's identity, and relevant redress. If it lacks contact details for all affected consumers, it must make the same information public and easily accessible on its interface.

Keep evidence showing how the marketplace enforced Article 30 in seller onboarding and live seller maintenance. Store the collected trader data securely, document how reliability and completeness were assessed, and tie each trader status change to the relevant product or service flow.

Article 30 requires secure storage during the contractual relationship and for six months after it ends, followed by deletion. Disclosure to third parties should be limited to cases required by applicable law, including DSA orders and competent-authority or Commission orders.

Article 27 applies to providers of online platforms that use recommender systems. The DSA defines a recommender system as a fully or partly automated system that suggests information, prioritises it, or determines the relative order or prominence of information in the platform interface.

The platform must set out, in its terms and conditions and in plain, intelligible language, the main parameters used by the recommender system and any options recipients have to modify or influence those parameters. Article 19 can exclude qualifying micro and small online-platform providers from Article 27, subject to the post-loss transition and the rule that designated VLOPs remain covered.

Article 27 distinguishes between disclosure of options and in-product functionality. If several options are available for a recommender system that determines the relative order of information, the platform must let the recipient select and modify the preferred option at any time.

That control must be directly and easily accessible from the specific part of the online interface where information is being prioritised. A buried account setting is weak evidence if the ranking choice is presented somewhere else.

Article 38 adds a separate requirement for providers of very large online platforms and very large online search engines that use recommender systems. In addition to Article 27, they must provide at least one option for each recommender system that is not based on profiling under the GDPR definition referenced by the DSA.

Profiling here means automated processing of personal data to evaluate personal aspects of a natural person, including analysis or prediction of interests, behaviour, location, or other listed characteristics. A provider should test the actual data and logic behind the option; a label such as 'chronological' or 'non-personalised' does not by itself establish that the option is not based on profiling.

The 45 million average-monthly-active-recipient threshold informs designation, but Article 38 applies after the Commission designates the service as a VLOP or VLOSE. For those designated services, the recommender inventory should show each recommender system and its matching non-profiling option.