Commission harmonises transparency reporting rules under the Digital Services Act
Today, the European Commission adopted an Implementing Regulation outlining the rules and templates for transparency reporting by providers of intermediary services under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
This new law ensures that all relevant providers give clear and comparable information on their content moderation practices.
The DSA aims to foster transparency and public accountability for digital services in the EU. One of such transparency measures is the obligations for providers of intermediary services to publish transparency reports, detailing their content moderation practices. The reports must include specific categories of information, depending on the type of provider, such as the number of pieces of content removed, the accuracy of automated content moderation systems, account terminations, and information on their content moderation teams. Very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large online search engines (VLOSEs) are required to publish such transparency reports twice a year, all other services once per year.
The new Implementing Regulation standardises the format, content, and reporting periods for these transparency reports, detailing their content moderation practices and containing specific categories of information. Previously, inconsistency between reporting practices made it difficult to assess and compare the moderation practices of intermediary services. The reports also varied widely in format and interpretation of data categories. The reporting periods for providers of VLOPs and VLOSEs were not aligned, depending on their dates of designation. The Regulation addresses these inconsistencies by establishing uniform reporting templates and periods. Providers will have to start collecting data according to the Implementing Regulation as of 1 July 2025, with the first harmonised reports due in the beginning of 2026.
The DSA also introduces other transparency measures, including the publication of average monthly user numbers, more details on recommender system parameters, data access for researchers, detailed information on content moderation decisions though the statements of reasons collected in the DSA Transparency Database as well as enhanced transparency on advertising.
To ensure consistency between the transparency tools of the DSA, the requirements for submitting statements of reasons to the DSA Transparency Database will be updated to be aligned with the data categories in the Implementing Regulation. Providers will have to submit statements of reasons according to the new requirements starting from 1 July 2025, same as for the transparency reporting templates.
Access the implementing regulation, the templates and instructions
