The Internet Commission Working Paper Settling DSA-related Disputes Outside the Courtroom: The Opportunities and Challenges Presented by Article 21 of the Digital Services Act by Ruairí Harrison (The Internet Commission) Jonny Shipp (The Internet Commission) Aebha Curtis (The Internet Commission) Abstract Despite the inherently contentious and opaque nature of content moderation and the variety of disputes which users may find themselves in, particularly when engaging with political, provocative, or satirical content, a user’s ability to externally appeal a moderation decision has up until this point been limited. While a user may still challenge the platform’s decision in a court of law and Meta have established an Oversight Board to independently review ‘significant’ content decisions, the ability for the everyday user to access redress solutions is otherwise limited. To address this, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) introduced an out-of-court dispute settlement (ODS) procedure to provide an external, independent redress solution. This is a novel form of non-judicial redress in that it has not been legislated for previously in the realm of content moderation. Innumerable topics may emerge from Article 21 DSA alone, but for the purposes of this paper, we will focus on two conditions which the ODS bodies must satisfy in order to become certified under this Article. These conditions for certification are the ‘independence’ and ‘expertise’ of ODS bodies. Within these sections and flowing from them, several practical matters which remain open-ended at present will be teased out from the perspective of not only the ODS body, but also national regulators, online platforms, and users. By doing this, the paper attempts to follow on from previous contributions on this topic to move Article 21 DSA from theory into practice in these initial months following the DSA coming fully into force.
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