The Global Network Initiative (GNI) appreciates the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed qualitative and quantitative reporting templates for intermediary services, hosting services, online platforms, and search engines covered by the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
GNI has been encouraging technology companies to enhance transparency around actions that impact user privacy and freedom of expression for over fifteen years. GNI’s member companies have consistently been at the forefront of pushing forward innovative approaches to transparency reporting, starting with the very first tech company transparency report issued by Google in 2010. Subsequent innovations have included detailed reporting categories and formats, including the use of Country Legal Framework Reports as a way to share contextual information that can help users and researchers understand relevant surveillance and censorship laws that apply to ICT companies in different jurisdictions. GNI, in collaboration with BrainBox Institute, has also spearheaded the Action Coalition on Meaningful Transparency, a project launched under the Danish Tech for Democracy initiative that aims to bring together a wide range of academics, civil society organizations, companies, governments, and international organizations to work collaboratively on digital transparency. At the end of last year, the ACT published the Transparency Initiatives Portal, a community-driven resource for tracking work on tech transparency around the world, which was also used to share information about this consultation.
We applaud the European Union on the multiple transparency-related elements of the DSA and appreciate the attention to detail that went into the drafting of this reporting template, which we believe will help raise the bar for transparency reporting across the sector, improve comparability across time and covered services (so long as services are given the flexibility and opportunity to contextualize the data and their content moderation practices through more qualitative information), and generally improve understandings of the decisions that covered services are making with respect to content and user data. While transparency reporting serves a crucial purpose in promoting accountability and understanding of how platforms operate, it is essential to recognize that these mandates represent a form of compelled speech, albeit a legitimate one. Therefore, any transparency requirements must be carefully crafted to ensure that they are clear, unambiguous, necessary, and proportionate to the public interest they seek to serve.
In this submission, we detail a number of concerns and related suggestions which we believe can strengthen and clarify the proposed templates and guidance in order to mitigate against unintended consequences from this otherwise praise-worthy aspect of the DSA. In summary, GNI recommends the Commission ensure the transparency requirements: a) do not create a significant burden for medium intermediaries and emerging services, b) allow a degree of flexibility in reporting categories of illegal content, c) clarify the scope for member state orders, and d) create room for nuanced reporting on companies’ compliance with government requests.