Google updates service policies to comply with EU regulations

cointelegraph.com:

Google plans to update some of its service policies in order to comply with the European Digital Services Act (DSA) according to a blog post on Aug. 24. 

The BigTech giant says it has made “significant investments” in various areas in order to comply with the European Union’s DSA’s specific requirements.

It plans to expand its Ads Transparency Center, expand reachers’ access to data, expand its transparency research, add more visibility for content moderation, create a new Transparency Center for its policies and conduct more in-depth risk analysis.

The post also expressed that Google has voiced concerns about the potential “unintended consequences of some of these measures:

The intention of the EU’s DSA was to consolidate content regulations across the region and form more specific processes for content moderation online. It also categorized 17 online platforms as very large online platforms (VLOPs) and 2 as very large online search engines (VLOSEs).

General requirements for sites in these categories include prevention and removal of illegal posts and a way to report them, targeted advertising being banned based on a user’s sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity or political beliefs, targeted ads to children being restricted and data sharing with researchers and authorities, among others. 

Related: Google upgrades search engine with AI-powered enhancements

The VLOPs included: Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Booking.com Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia and Zalando.

The two VLOSEs it categorized were Bing Search and Google Search.

All the platforms mentioned in these categories had until Aug. 28 to