"Harassment and abuse are all too common on the modern internet," writes the New York Times. "Yet it was supposed to be different in Germany." In 2017, the country enacted one of the world's toughest laws against online hate speech. It requires Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to remove illegal comments, pictures or videos within 24 hours of being notified about them or risk fines of up to 50 million euros. Supporters hailed it as a watershed moment for internet regulation and a model for other countries. But an influx of hate speech and harassment in the run-up to the German election, in which the country will choose a new leader to replace Angela Merkel, its longtime chancellor, has exposed some of the law's weaknesses.

With the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Union is to adopt landmark legislation that will create a framework to regulate online platforms around the world. This event hosted by MEP Patrick Breyer brought together experts from the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Fundamental Rights Agency and civil society.

Paul-Olivier writes about the current draft of the Digital Services Act and looks into categories of actors and provisions from a transparency perspective.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: The European Commission has released its public draft of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which, along with the Digital Services Act (DSA,) represents the first major overhaul of EU Internet legislation in the 21st Century. Like the DSA, the DMA takes aim at the monopolisation of the tech sector and proposes sweeping pro-competition regulations with serious penalties for noncompliance.

The EU’s Digital Services Act is likely to become a battlefield for European digital policy and could be a standard-setting law for the global digital sphere.