EC designates WhatsApp as a VLOP under the DSA. Meta has until May to establish and show compliance.
This is based on the Channels functionality (the online platform part, next to the private messaging part), as it reached the threshold 45M users in the EU.
Nu.nl item saying the EC is seeking a court ordered ban on Grok in the EU. This was not mentioned in the EC press release on the extension of DSA investigations
If proven, these failures would constitute infringements of Articles 34(1) and (2), 35(1) and 42(2) of the DSA.
The investigation concerns Article 34(1) and 34(2), 35(1) and 42(2).
he Commission has extended its ongoing formal proceedings opened against X in December 2023 to establish whether X has properly assessed and mitigated all systemic risks, as defined in the DSA, associated with its recommender systems, including the impact of its recently announced switch to a Grok-based recommender system.
The existing investigation of X under the DSA wrt recommender systems is extended in scope to include the recommender functions that Grok is announced to provide
The new investigation will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok's functionalities into X in the EU. This includes risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material.
A new investigation under the DSA wrt Grok and the production/dissemination of illegal incl sexualised imagery and CSAM
EC press release wrt investigations into X and Grok under the DSA.
EC opens DSA investigation of X over Grok
Polish president vetoed DSA implementation law. This does not reduce the working of the DSA bc it's a regulation. Does hinder Polish national elements, like a national coordinator and contact points, Polish entities as trusted flaggers etc.
Article by Markus Beckedahl et al on the same Grok situtation. Here AI Act does get a mention, and some lines to GDPR and copyright laws too.
Clear headed explanation of DSA wrt Grok and X. Otoh in the case of Grok, I think the AI Act has a role to play, which is directly and more immediately connected to market access of Grok. It only takes into account the DSA, and the AIR isn't fully applicable yet, but still I think the entire framework needs to be taken into account. Incl the GDPR.
iBestuur lijstje van wat in 2026 nieuw van toepassing zijnde wetten zijn. NIS2, CRA, DSA, AIR en de Wmebv (email vanaf nu een wettelijk kanaal: betekent dit dat VNG nu niet meer mag adviseren the elektronisch weg af te sluiten voor WOO verzoeken?)
Irish gov will use their presidency (2nd half of 2026 I think, coming half year is Cyprus, no?) to look into ID-verified social media in the EU. On Mastodon this was posted w t question how it relates to Fediverse. Presumably this will be based on the Digital Services Act, DSA (and GDPR). My current assessment is that DSA hardly applies to fediverse, esp not if there's plenty of federation vs centralisation on a handful of instances. The DSA legislates platforms, not social features, and those features are possible without platforms.
CEPS report on Fediverse wrt DSA, from early 2025. I mistook this one for the IVIR one from 2024 IVIR DSA en Fediverse 2024 in Zotero, which I have remarks about. I have seen this doc, but not sure if I actually took it in.
Was pointed out to me wrt ID reqs for social media, and if they would apply to fediverse (my first approx is no, if you federate much more agressively, yes if very large instances)
Relevant wrt DSA too, size and revenue type.
* "Digital platforms are used for hybrid campaigns."* "EU can't compete with US tech ON THEIR TERMS."* "Post-reality US is what happens when tech is unregulated."* "Ireland is a Trojan Horse for Big Tech."* "The Digital Omnibus is sabotage."
Quotes van [[Defend Democracy o]] event w DK EU presidency cohosting. All convey an aspect of where work is needed. On each I see one could define [[Handelen 20040327155224]] as [[SC landscape van EU Dataspace]] interventions and broader.
the last one pertains to the AI / GDPR omnibus, not the data one, I think.
examine power as an emergent consequence of deployment and incentives, not intent.
Intent def is there too though, much of this is entrenching, and much of it is a power grab (esp US tech at the mo), to get from capital/tech concentration to coopting governance structures
AI is a tech where by design it is not lowering a participation threshold, it positions itself as bigger-than-us, like nuclear reactors, not just anyone can run with it. That only after 3 years we see a budding diy / individual agency angle shows as much. It was only designed to create and entrench power (or transform it to another form), other digital techs originate as challenge to power, this one clearly the opposite. The companies involved fight against things that push towards smaller than us ai tech, like local offline first. E.g. DMA/DSA
US democratic community site notices the Trump admin steps against DSA enforcement, and describes it well.
US admin sanctioned people involved in shaping the DSA. The wilfull misreading of DMA, DSA, AIR, GDPR in the US and bigtech is a clear confirmation of its need for the European market.
Article seems too narrow in looking at the dynamics. Tech platforms are not the context, single market and market rules and access are, including outside digital. Meaning every other party dealing with platforms has a very different set of considerations when choosing platforms of any size. Loss of market access is not about the tech, but about whether there are others willing to do business with you.
The base case isn't resolution. It's controlled escalation with higher compliance spend, modest margin drag, and forced substitution as the biggest platforms build moats from regulatory complexity itself.
The US admin escalation is likely a spasm, and if not a cause of bifurcation rather than response. The base case is shoulder shrugs anywhere outside the USA. The endpoint is no market access for non-compliant platforms of any size. Which does not mean a ban or tech blockade, but the absence of possibility to interact with the EU market as corporates, including the ad market e.g. The law of two feet is the largest fine here (not just the platforms need to be compliant, their businesspartners too, and for them to walk is the cheaper compliance path.
The wild card remains a behind-the-scenes "Digital Bretton Woods"—standardized frameworks for transparency, due process, and appeals that let both sides claim victory while lowering uncertainty.
Not a wild card (The wild card is the zero sum behaviour of US admin), but an aimed for outcome. Standardisation, transparency and interoperability are key digital policy aims. Note that it is exactly what big tech is clamoring against at the moment.
Second-order effects create opportunities: vendors selling compliance plumbing (audit trails, policy ops, transparency systems) gain; European "sovereignty stack" providers (cloud, identity, data governance) benefit if retaliation shifts to procurement preferences over fines.
This is not second order, but a primary policy aim for the EU digital single market.
The splinternet thesis gets its Western chapter. Not US-China separation, but US-EU divergence inside allied markets—subtler, but more margin-destructive. Big Tech that can operationally bifurcate wins near-term. X-style political defiance loses because EU enforcers smartly choose process violations over content disputes.
Regulatory differences are of all time and splinternet it is not, which implies hard (tech) breaks. Additionally the DSA is unifying for Europe, part of the digital single market. It only looks like divergence to any incumbents outside the EU.
That raises fixed costs and favors scale—paradoxically advantaging the largest platforms that can afford regional bifurcation while crushing subscale competitors.
Not really, it does not favor scale, as it's progressive compliance. The next sentence says as much. One platform's bifurcation is the same as having two smaller ones, who have less compliance costs and thus won't be crushed. Which is already the case even, global platforms already cater to diff regulatory regimes (and morally questionable at that). The underlying faulty assumption is that of global platforms for everyone and everything being the desired outcome at all. SV thinking and funding is the root cause. Other paths exist, just not in their world. Zebra's not unicorns. [[Zebra bedrijven zijn beter 20190907063530]] Vgl physical e.g. the German industrial base actually is one of many medium sized orgs being market leaders in some niche, not the car manufacturers usually mentioned as such.
Expect geo-fenced product design: "EU mode" platforms with different algorithmic defaults, transparency flows, and researcher access versus "US mode."
yes, likely in the short term. Thing is: once people globally see the outcome of those diff modes, which will they prefer? Vgl GDPR
U.S. willingness to treat compliance as hostile action changes the calculation.
yes, it means the USA cannot be treated as an equal or rational counterpart. n:: EU moving to adversarial interoperability in a sense? n:: Brusselscountereffect?
That increases risk premium on firms whose EU revenues depend on algorithmic distribution: social platforms, digital advertising, app stores, marketplace ranking.
in contradiction to the entrenching above. Of these adtech is the key thing, and algorithms aimed for engagement (ie rage)
The irony both sides miss: this conflict could entrench the very platforms Trump claims to defend and Europe claims to regulate. Compliance burden becomes incumbent moat.
Not following. By def the strictest stuff applies to the largest platforms, so no moat. n:: The compliance burden is progressive, like taxes are /should be.
The DSA doesn't mandate content removal based on viewpoint; it requires transparency in algorithmic curation, researcher access to platform data, and accountability for enforcement decisions. What the Trump administration calls "censorship," Europe frames as democratic governance of the digital public square—the same principle that makes "what is illegal offline illegal online."
Yes, such paragraphs need to be up front.
a sharper conflict emerges: this is about who owns the distribution layer of democracy—who sets the rules for how speech gets amplified, throttled, demonetized, and made discoverable on platforms where most political discourse now occurs.
yes, sort of. 'distribution layer of democracy' interesting phrase. amplification, throttling, monetisation (Freudian misspelling there?), discoverability all important. But the key thing: the platforms in question are not platforms in the strict sense, they actively shape the information there. So liability protections for platforms should not apply. Or gov also can set the boundaries of such shaping.
The EU had just levied a €120 million fine on X for DSA violations—the first major enforcement action under rules requiring platforms to moderate illegal content
There are many other fines levied (all without making any dents in the behaviour fined though), the 120ME one for Twitter was the first under DSA illegal content rules (which don't specify what illegal content, but mechanisms for moderation against them)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed it as combating a "global censorship-industrial complex" targeting American platforms and speech.
The choice of words is wrong on many diff levels. Global / censorship / industrial complex, three diff long explanations. One would need more populist labels for the actual character of platforms (not just bigtech) afoul of the DSA
visa restrictions on Thierry Breton, architect of the EU's Digital Services Act, alongside four anti-disinformation advocates: Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Clare Melford of the Global Disinformation Index, and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid
Sanctioned are Thierry Breton (EC in the previous period), and people from the Global Disinformation Index, and HateAid. Such orgs have a role in research into the inner workings of platforms.
explore cooperation on enhancing information integrity online, including on the challenges posed by generative AI and the risks stemming from foreign information manipulation and interference.
DSA aspects
He said Meta would “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more”.
This is the key statement. Increasingly Meta is pushed towards accountability, including inside the US. That push is bad for their business bc their core business model is founded on factors that can only keep 'growing' if there is no accountability.
He cited Europe as a place with “an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative”
Meta's step is also a hedge against DSA fall-out. Whereas the current US gov was acting towards similar conditions removing contrast beween DSA en US regs, increasing the contrast allows Meta to be a victim. Using the word 'censorship' is a tell in itself, as that is not what the DSA does.
We are looking closely at Meta’s announcement impacting its US platform. The UK’s Online Safety Act will oblige them to remove illegal content and content harmful to children here in the UK, and we continue to urge social media companies to counter the spread of misinformation and disinformation hosted on their platforms.”
Meta might be running into UK OSA too. - [ ] zoek de UK online safety act op en vergelijk structuur met DSA #eudata #30mins
Meta/FB decision to remove factchecking likely puts it at odds with the EU DSA. Likely that's why the announcement includes 'starting in the US'. Clashes certain in EU.
in queue/stack questions see whether they are saying to print the front or top element or remove and print the front and top elm. if they r just saying to print the top/front elm then track them st[st.length-1] or que[0], if they r saying remove and print then console.log(que.shift())
Incorrect Console Output on Enqueue (push):The push method in JavaScript returns the new length of the array, not the element that was pushed. So, let enter = que.push(input[i][1]) assigns the length of the queue to enter, not the element that was added.
The problem in your code seems to be with the way you’re handling the push operation and printing the result. Here’s a breakdown of the issues and improvements you can make:
Incorrect Console Output on Enqueue (push):
The push method in JavaScript returns the new length of the array, not the element that was pushed. So, let enter = que.push(input[i][1]) assigns the length of the queue to enter, not the element that was added. Instead, you should directly print the element that was added to the queue. Correcting the console.log for Enqueue:
Replace console.log(enter) with console.log(input[i][1]) to print the element being added to the queue instead of the length of the queue.
each of these instances will need to comply with a set of minimumobligations for intermediary and hosting services, including having a single point of contact and legal representative, providing clear terms and conditions, publishing bi-annual transparency reports, having a notice and action mechanism and, communicating information about removals or restrictions to both notice and content providers
Revisiting this after 2yrs, now as board member of mastodon.nl, need to read relevant DSA sections again, and think about if/how this applies. The list here as such is almost completely covered by default, except for the reports, which will come as we're heading towards ANBI status anyway.
-[ ] lees DSA met mastodon.nl bril tav kleine platforms #activityclub #30mins
creepy uncanny valley stuff. Platform sanctioned bots insinuating themselves in spots where the expected context is 100% human interaction, undisclosed, and with the aim to mimick interaction to lock in engagement ('cause #adtech) Making the group of people a means. One wonders if this reaches the emotional influencing threshold in the EU legal framework
If there is any hope for our ability to understand what really happens on social media next year, it may come from the European Union, where the Digital Services Act demands transparency from platforms operating on the continent. But enforcement actions are slow, and wars and elections are fast by comparison. The surge of disinformation around Israel and Gaza may point to a future in which what happens online is literally unknowable.
Zuckerman mentions the DSA as his single hope, the only surprisal in this piece. Although the DMA is important wrt the silos too, as is the GDPR, it is the DSA that has the transparency reqs, plus actually describes the outside research access Zuckerman sees frustrated as mandatory. Says enforcement is slow however. Yes, at the same time it's not just reactive enforcement. It's about EU market access, pro-active disclosures are mandatory.
The EC has designated the first batch of VLOP and VLOSE under the DSA
consultation on data access to researchers is opened until 25 May. t:: need to better read Article 41? wrt this access. Lots of conspiracytalk around it re censorship, what does the law say?
The last thing Europe wants is its regulation that restricts future innovation, raising barriers to entry for new businesses and users alike.
Which is why DSA and DMA target larger entities beyond that start-up scale.
There is no central authority or control that one could point to and hold responsible for content moderation practices; instead, moderation happens in an organic bottom-up manner
This is I think an incorrect way of picturing it. Moderation isn't bottom-up, that again implies seeing the fediverse as a whole. Moderation is taking place in each 'shop' in a 'city center', every 'shop' has its own house rules. And that is the only level of granularity that counts, the system as a whole isn't a system entity. Like road systems, e-mail, postal systems, internet infra etc. aren't either.
Since moderation in major social media platforms is conducted by a central authority, the DSA can effectively hold a single entity accountable through obligations. This becomes more complex in decentralized networks, where content moderation is predominantly community-driven.
Does it become more complex in federation? Don't think so as it also means that the reach and impact of each of those small instances is by def limited. Most of the fediverse will never see most of the fediverse. Thus it likely flies under any ceiling that incurs new responsibilities.
what will it mean if an instance ends up generating above EUR 10 million in annual turnover or hires more than 50 staff members? Under the DSA, if these thresholds are met the administrators of that instance would need to proceed to the implementation of additional requirements, including a complaint handling system, cooperation with trusted flaggers and out-of-court dispute bodies, enhanced transparency reporting and the adoption of child protection measures, as well as the banning of dark patterns. Failure to comply with these obligations may result in fines or the geo-blocking of the instance across the EU market.
50ppl and >10M turnover for a single instance (mastodon.social runs on 50k in donations or so)? Don't see that happening, and if, how likely is it that will be in the European market? Where would such turnover come from anyways, it isn't adverts so could only be member fees as donations don't count? Currently it's hosters that make money, for keeping the infra humming.
Today– given the non-profit model and limited, volunteer administration of most existing instances– all Mastodon servers would seem to be exempt from obligations for large online platforms
Almost by definition federated instances don't qualify as large platform.
However, based on the categorizations of the DSA, it is most probable that each instance could be seen as an independent ‘online platform’ on which a user hosts and publishes content that can reach a potentially unlimited number of users. Thus, each of these instances will need to comply with a set of minimum obligations for intermediary and hosting services, including having a single point of contact and legal representative, providing clear terms and conditions, publishing bi-annual transparency reports, having a notice and action mechanism and, communicating information about removals or restrictions to both notice and content providers.
Mastodon instances, other than personal or closed ones, would fall within the DSA. Each instance is its own platform though. Because of that I don't think this holds up very well, are closed Discord servers platforms under the DSA too then? Most of these instances are small, many don't encourage new users (meaning the potential reach is very limited). For largers ones like mastodon.nl this probably does apply.
The law in question is the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which was passed by the European Parliament last July 5th amidst almost total indifferenc
Total indifference? The moment of the law's passing in July was the end of years of discussion and debate. The proposal was published at the end of 2020, and had been years in the making. Also it's a continuation of pre-existing regulations. Things only come suddenly if you haven't been paying attention to the process.
Again, there is no need to enter into the tortuous details of the legislative text to show this
This is BS. There is every need to base yourself on the legislative text itself. There's nothing tortuous about that text.
Complexity table STL
STL Summary
Bitwise Hacks - No BS
Collision reduction in Hash Tables : Open Addressing
Containers library From cppreference.com < cpp
Detailed overview of stl containers
Quick summary of stl
MediaWi
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