EU Digital Services Act Lacks Transparency to Assess Its Impact on Free Speech Globally, New ITIF Report Finds

WASHINGTON—As debate intensifies in Washington over whether the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) threatens free speech beyond Europe, a new analysis from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) finds that the law’s reporting system and publicly available records don’t provide sufficient transparency to assess its true impact on users’ free speech globally as platforms adopt Europe’s regulatory standards in other jurisdictions to simplify their compliance obligations.

“The DSA is intended to increase transparency and accountability in content moderation, but its reporting requirements are too vague to allow researchers, regulators, or users to fully analyze the law’s effects,” said Ash Johnson, ITIF senior policy manager and co-author of the report. “Without clearer data, there is no way to assess whether EU rules are inadvertently restricting lawful speech for American users or others around the world.”

The DSA requires large online platforms to report content moderation decisions in a public Transparency Database. ITIF examined millions of moderation actions submitted within a single 24-hour period in July 2024 and found that nearly 90 percent relied on overly broad categories such as “scope of platform service,” while essential details—like whether EU-mandated decisions were applied outside Europe—were often missing. These gaps make it impossible to evaluate the law’s effects on users in the United States or globally.

To provide meaningful transparency and better assess potential global effects, ITIF recommends:

• Removing the vague “scope of platform service” category and expanding reporting to reflect specific EU laws or platform policies.
• Separating “illegal or harmful speech” into distinct categories to clarify free speech implications.
• Requiring platforms to indicate whether content removal was based on EU law or their own terms of service.
• Requiring platforms to disclose whether EU moderation decisions were applied outside the EU.

“Fixing these transparency gaps would allow researchers, policymakers, and users to understand the DSA’s real-world effects,” said Johnson. “That would help ensure that European regulatory standards don’t restrict lawful speech in the United States or worldwide.”

Read the report.

Contact: Nicole Hinojosa, [email protected]