| NOTAS: | "In March 2024, just in time for the European elections, the European Commission issued its Guidelines for very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large search engines (VLOSEs) on the mitigation of systemic risks for electoral processes. These Guidelines set out a list of mitigation measures for services to implement in order to prevent negative effects on the upcoming electoral processes and future ones. However, as explored in a previous CERRE paper, risk assessments under the Digital Services Act lack clear benchmarks for evaluating these measures. In this new CERRE report the authors take an ambitious step towards to fill this gap by proposing benchmarks and a framework for assessing the negative effects to electoral processes that VLOP and VLOSE providers are expected to mitigate. These benchmarks define what ‘good’ electoral integrity looks like and set out the positive roles that VLOPs and VLOSEs can play as well as how to diagnose systemic failure. From these benchmarks, the paper defines a set of 13 potential negative effects and proposes a set of metrics and data for their evaluation. Overall, the implementation of the DSA’s provisions on these very large services should be about learning how to effectively prevent “negative impacts of systemic risks on society and democracy”. The effective implementation of the DSA cannot be a box-ticking compliance exercise." |
