Digital Services Act Service Types and Scope

Article 2 applies the DSA to intermediary services offered to recipients that have their place of establishment or are located in the Union, regardless of where the provider itself is established. A non-EU provider can therefore be in scope if it enables natural or legal persons in one or more Member States to use the service and has a substantial connection to the Union.

The first scoping record should decide whether the service is an information society service, normally provided for remuneration, at a distance, by electronic means, and at the individual request of a recipient. It must then fit one of the three intermediary service types named in Article 3: mere conduit, caching, or hosting. If the product is not an intermediary service, the DSA does not convert the underlying product, transport, accommodation, delivery, consumer-law, product-safety, copyright, privacy, or audiovisual rules into DSA obligations.

A mere conduit service transmits recipient-provided information in a communication network or provides access to a communication network. A caching service also transmits recipient-provided information but temporarily stores it automatically and intermediately to make onward transmission more efficient. A hosting service stores information provided by, and at the request of, a recipient of the service.

The classification matters because the DSA liability exemptions and due-diligence duties build from this base. Mere conduit and caching analysis focuses on transmission and technical storage conditions. Hosting adds notice-and-action mechanisms, statement-of-reasons duties for certain restrictions, and notification duties for suspicions of serious criminal offences.

An online platform is a hosting service that stores recipient-provided information and disseminates it to the public at the recipient's request, unless public dissemination is only a minor and purely ancillary feature. Social networks, content-sharing services, app stores, and platforms where consumers can conclude distance contracts with traders are common examples, but the legal test depends on the service facts.

Marketplaces are not merely any commerce website. The DSA marketplace overlay applies to providers of online platforms allowing consumers to conclude distance contracts with traders. That overlay adds trader traceability, interface design duties for trader information, and consumer information duties when an illegal product or service was offered through the platform. Online search engines are their own intermediary service category and have separate active-recipient and VLOSE designation analysis.

DSA scoping is cumulative. All intermediary providers have baseline duties such as points of contact, terms-and-conditions transparency, and transparency reporting unless an exclusion applies. Hosting services add notice-and-action and statement-of-reasons duties. Online platforms add complaint handling, out-of-court dispute settlement access, trusted-flagger handling, misuse policies, advertising transparency, recommender transparency, and minor-protection duties where the factual triggers exist.

Micro and small enterprise exclusions reduce some online-platform and marketplace obligations, but they do not remove every DSA duty and they do not protect a service that is designated as a very large online platform. Under Recommendation 2003/361/EC, a microenterprise has fewer than 10 staff and annual turnover or annual balance-sheet total no higher than EUR 2 million; a small enterprise has fewer than 50 staff and annual turnover or annual balance-sheet total no higher than EUR 10 million. The Recommendation also requires partner- and linked-enterprise data to be counted. For marketplaces, the additional trader-traceability and interface duties are a further layer on top of online-platform status, not a substitute for hosting or platform obligations.

VLOP and VLOSE status is not a self-selected marketing label. Article 33 sets the scale threshold at average monthly active recipients in the Union equal to or higher than 45 million, but the Commission must designate the individual platform or search service. Notification of that decision starts the four-month application clock for the enhanced duties.

The user-number record should be service-specific. Article 24(2) requires covered providers of online platforms and online search engines to publish average monthly active recipients in the Union at least every six months, subject to the Article 19 exclusion for qualifying micro and small online-platform providers. Commission guidance explains that recipient information is relevant for VLOP and VLOSE designation. Once notified of designation, a service has four months before the VLOP/VLOSE-specific obligations apply.