Automated Transparency: A Legal and Empirical Analysis of the Digital Services Act Transparency Database
The Digital Services Act (DSA), adopted by the European Union on 1 November 2022, aims to establish a global benchmark for accountability and transparency in platform governance. A key feature of the DSA is the requirement for online platforms to issue ‘statements of reasons’ (SoRs) for their content moderation decisions, introducing a novel mechanism of automated transparency. These SoRs are stored in the DSA Transparency Database, launched by the European Commission in September 2023.
Gerasimos Spanakis and others’ study assesses the efficacy of the Transparency Database in fulfilling the DSA’s transparency goals by examining both structural transparency and platform compliance. Through legal and empirical analysis, Gerasimos Spanakis and others identify transparency improvements yet highlight significant compliance challenges due to platform discretion in reporting practices. Their empirical investigation of a representative sample of 131 million SoRs submitted in November 2023 evaluates the transparency of platform content moderation activities.
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