The DSA's First Year: Promising Framework, Uneven Enforcement

A year into the Digital Services Act’s application to Very Large Online Platforms, the picture is mixed. The framework is the most serious attempt yet to hold platforms structurally accountable — not just for individual pieces of harmful content, but for the design choices that make harmful content profitable. That distinction matters enormously.

But enforcement has been uneven. The Commission opened proceedings against X and TikTok relatively quickly, but the broader audit and transparency mechanisms have moved slowly. Independent researchers still struggle to access meaningful algorithmic data, which was supposed to be one of the DSA’s signature contributions.

The deeper problem is that the DSA was designed for a specific era of platform power — one dominated by a handful of US-headquartered giants. It’s less clear how it scales to a more fragmented landscape, or how it handles platforms that are technically compliant while remaining substantively harmful. Compliance and accountability are not the same thing.

That said, the DSA has already shifted the terms of debate. Platforms now have to justify their systems publicly in ways they never did before. That’s not nothing — it’s the foundation for the next phase of pressure.