17-03-2025
Online platforms fail to assess risks in annual reports, study says
Reports that major online platforms must draw up under EU rules designed to assess risks on their platforms, including features that could influence users' mental health, are falling short, according to a study by the DSA Civil Society Coordination Group (CSCG) published on Monday.
The group, which includes the Center for Democracy and Technology, consumer group BEUC and privacy advocates Mozilla and Access Now among others, said that the reports do not 'adequately assess and address the actual harms and foreseeable negative effects of platform functioning.'
The first batch of annual reports by websites designated very large online platforms (VLOPs) by the European Commission in 2023 under the Digital Services Act (DSA) - including Facebook, TikTok and Google - came out last November.
The CSCG report says that the exercises should focus 'more thoroughly on risks stemming from platform design, in particular recommender systems, which amplify harmful content that contribute to risks such as mental health issues and political polarisation.'
'Design choices, particularly those driven by engagement metrics, can significantly contribute to systemic risks […]. Despite this, many reports focused primarily on content moderation rather than addressing how platform design itself might be a root cause of harm,' the report said.
Besides these exercises, platforms are also required to conduct ad hoc risk assessments before launching new features or products in the EU.
In the case of TikTok, last year, the company decided to withdraw its TikTok Lite rewards program from the EU market, after concerns raised by the Commission about the impact on the mental health of users.
The Commission has opened several investigations under the DSA and sent requests for information to platforms about their recommender systems, including to X and Temu.
Just over a day after blasting off, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, delivering the replacements for NASA's two stuck astronauts.
The four newcomers — representing the U.S., Japan and Russia — will spend the next few days learning the station's ins and outs from Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Then the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week, one that has been up there since last year, to close out an unexpected extended mission that began last June.
Wilmore and Williams expected that they would be gone for just a week when they took Boeing's first astronaut flight to the ISS. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month.
The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.
Wilmore swung open the space station's hatch and then rang the ship's bell as the new arrivals floated in one by one and were greeted with hugs and handshakes.
'It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive,' Williams told Mission Control.
Wilmore's and Williams' ride arrived back in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back. But more delays resulted when their replacements' brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs. An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple weeks to mid-March.
Weather permitting, the SpaceX capsule carrying Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts will undock from the space station no earlier than Wednesday and splash down off Florida's coast.
Until then, there will be 11 aboard the orbiting lab, representing the U.S., Russia and Japan.
