The Digital Services Act (DSA)

The small café on the corner and the chain with a thousand locations follow the same health rules. But the chain gets asked for more: its own oversight, regular reports, and an answer for what happens if something goes wrong across the whole city at once. The DSA is the same logic, carried over to the internet.

The 45 million threshold

A platform that reaches 45 million average monthly users in the EU becomes a very large online platform, a VLOP. A search engine over the same line becomes a very large online search engine, a VLOSE. From then on it has to assess and reduce the systemic risks of its service and its algorithms itself: illegal content, harm to minors, people's physical and mental well-being, fundamental rights, elections, public security.

On August 31, 2026 the Commission designated ChatGPT a very large online search engine, and Reddit and Roblox very large platforms. The services declared themselves that they pass the threshold. They have four months from notification, so until January 2027, to meet the obligations.

What oversight looks like in action: on October 21, 2026 the Commission opened formal proceedings against Booking.com. It asks whether the platform may have breached the DSA by not diligently assessing or effectively mitigating the risks of fraudulent listings and of phishing scams that exploit reservation and guest data, and by not clearly labelling as ads the listings whose providers paid for a higher ranking. This is proceedings, not a decision: no breach has been established and there is no fine.

And here is what comes after a fine. In May 2026 the Commission found that Temu had failed to comply with its risk assessment obligations and issued a €200 million fine. On October 26, 2026 it accepted Temu's action plan to remedy the breach, with five measures, and gave the platform four months to conduct an interim risk assessment. The fine is not the end of the case: Brussels is now watching whether the platform will change the way it measures risk.

To the law, ChatGPT is now a search engine. And it will answer like one.

What you get

The right to know why your content was taken down, and to appeal. A ban on dark design tricks that push you to click. A ban on ads targeted at children by profile. On the big platforms, an option for a feed that isn't ranked by your profile. On paper it looks small, but on a teenager's phone it makes a real difference.

The visual is generated code-art, no third-party images.