The procedural guarantees of the DSA and the European limits on the private power of digital platforms

Abstract

This essay analyzes the Digital Services Act (EU Regulation no. 2022/2065) as an innovative paradigm for regulating digital platforms, examining its constitutional and administrative implications in the context of European digital constitutionalism. The analysis highlights how the regulation introduces significant procedural guarantees borrowed from administrative law: transparency, motivation, non-discrimination and explainability of algorithmic decisions. The system of co-regulation through codes of conduct is a defining feature of the DSA, acting as a complementary enforcement tool to the legislation, with a particular focus on systemic risks such as disinformation, hate speech, and manipulation. At the same time, the supervision system, based on a logic of multilevel networking, has to be noticed. It appears to be the symptom of a EU gradual «administrativization». The DSA, while representing a starting point rather than an end point in the regulation of digital platforms, is intended as an attempt to rebalance the asymmetrical relationship between users and Big Tech through the proceduralization of safeguards