The next step towards auditing intermediaries
Abstract
The lack of transparency of digital platforms is a well-known problem that has wide societal implications. There is now an extraordinary opportunity to establish legally mandated criteria for meaningful transparency for online platforms in the proposed EU Digital Services Act (DSA). However, their success will depend on the strength of oversight mechanisms which need to be accompanied by sufficient access to data. Hence, we propose creating an auditing intermediary to assure the effectiveness of such oversight.