The EU's DSA goes into effect, forcing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to let users opt out of profiling-based content recommendations
TechCrunchNatasha Lomas
Context & Ripple Effects
This implementation follows the DSA framework’s earlier requirement that major platforms make their algorithms more transparent and address misinformation in crises, as outlined in the law’s earlier platform-accountability rules. It turns that framework into a concrete user-facing control over how feeds are ordered.
The measure initially centers on the largest social and video services, while later coverage shows the DSA’s application broadening to most EU online intermediaries, subject to small-business exemptions in the law’s wider rollout.
First-order effects
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok must provide an option to receive recommendations without profiling-based personalization, changing the feed controls available to EU users.
Platforms must operationalize an alternative recommendation experience alongside their personalized feeds, making the recommendation system itself a compliance surface.
Second-order effects
A meaningful share of users choosing the alternative feed could reduce the reach of engagement-optimized recommendations, forcing platforms to assess how discovery, retention and advertising workflows perform under the new choice.
The requirement raises the value of clear consent and settings design: competitors and adjacent services serving EU users face pressure to make recommendation choices legible rather than burying them in account controls.
Third-order effects
If enforced consistently, the DSA can shift platform governance from disclosure alone toward user-selectable constraints on algorithmic distribution, giving regulators a more direct way to shape feed design.
The broader structural test is whether a shared EU compliance baseline becomes a durable product standard across platforms or remains a regional configuration with limited effects elsewhere.
The trend: This is part of a shift from regulating platform content policies to regulating the design and user control of recommendation systems.
Important change in the European digital landscape with new rules in place to make online platforms safer for all of us, incl. children. Our teams are forward to analysing the platforms' own risk assessments...
[Translated from French] 🤡 When we are not able to assume the contradiction, different approaches and opinions, when we are not even able to implement a French or European search engine, what do we do? We remove television channels and censor social networks 🤡
This DSA does not make the internet “safer for everyone” The European Union made these rules because they can't innovate to save their sorry lives and decided targeting American tech firms was easier. This is a censorious law, and it should be soundly condemned.
The EU has none of the world leading tech companies, but all of the worst tech legislation. It's not exactly a coincidence. Europe is destined to be a historical vacation destination with nice food and pretty architecture. Nothing new comes from there anymore.
[Translated from Dutch] Conspiracy theorists already predicted this 7, 8 years ago, when we ‘jokingly’ called the EU the EUSSR. Were we right or not? DDR level censorship became law today, surrounded by the usual newspeak for totalitarian regimes.
I wonder how many social media posts by the EU would fall foul of this legislation? Though they've probably got a clause in it somewhere that exempts their utterances from ever being classed as “misinformation”
The EU has turned into an authoritarian super state that censors European citizens online I see less and less reasons to remain part of the EU We've lost Sovereignty of our borders. NGOs and the EU control Ireland. Many indigenous industries are destroyed #ResignHelen
Starting today, the European Commission will start putting massive fines on social media companies which don't remove misinformation and hate speech from their platforms.
Today, the Digital Services Act — #DSA — becomes legally enforceable for Very Large Online Platforms & Search Engines. These systemic platforms play a very important role in our daily lives — so it was time for the EU to set our own rules. A safer Internet for everyone 🇪🇺 [video]
💻Today the #DigitalServicesAct becomes legally enforceable for very large online platforms & search engines. #DSA will make the digital world🌍a better place by: 1⃣Making it easier to report dangerous goods & illegal content 2⃣Helping to tackle cyber bullying [image]
We're bringing our European values into the digital world. With strict rules on transparency and accountability, our Digital Services Act aims to protect our children, societies and democracies. As of today, very large online platforms must apply the new law.
In the EU, the Censorship DSA Digital Services Act is implemented as of today, August 25 2023. Exactly at 8am, a big Dutch Telegram Channel appears to have been shut down. I am curious to see what will happen here on X fka Twitter as of today. [image]
Here, for example, are some of the changes TikTok is bringing in as a result of the EU's new DSA laws. (It's not immediately clear whether these will apply to UK users or not.) https://newsroom.tiktok.com/ ... [image]
📣 New EU law brings us the ultimate freedom! Say goodbye to AI algorithms and hello to a chronological news feed. No more forced cat videos! Check out this post by Natasha Lomas on TechCrunch to learn more: https://techcrunch.com/... #SocialMediaRevolution