Foto: Shutterstock og Barnevakten. Bildet viser ei jente som benytter et nettbrett. EU-flagget skinner grafisk gjennom bildet.

New EU rules on digital rights

According to the new EU legislative proposal (Digital Service Act - DSA) adopted in the EU Parliament in January 2022, direct marketing by targeting children is not allowed. It gives both adults and children more digital rights.

Choose language in the Google-box below. Some translations may be flawed or inaccurate.

Digital Services Act (DSA)

“With the new tech law, DSA, we are going to take back control from the big tech companies.” This is what Danish politician Christel Schaldemose wrote on Twitter the day before the EU adopted the new digital rules. She is a Member of the European Parliament and leads the work on the digital rights of the population.

Following the decision in the parliament, the Council of Ministers, or more precisely the Council of the European Union, will also have a say in the team and finally adopt the DSA this summer. This Council consists of ministers from 27 countries. A majority must have to be obtained that represents 65 percent of the EU’s population.

After a couple of years, the rules will be included in Norwegian legislation.

A lot of documents about digital rights

EU rules are a heavy matter and consist of many documents. Here are some:

  • GDPR: In the field of digital EU rights, there are already Digital Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that have been included in Norwegian laws under the Privacy Regulation (personvernforordningen).
  • DSA: Recently, it was agreed on rules for digital services presented in the EU, the rules that are called “Digital Services Act” and abbreviated to DSA, these are the ones Christel Schaldemose writes about on Twitter above.
  • DMA: There is also a legislative proposal for marketing, the “Digital Markets Act,” abbreviated to DMA.
  • DGA: Rules for data sharing called “Data Governance Act.”
  • AIA: The EU also has guidelines for artificial intelligence; Artificial Intelligence Act.
  • Compass: The EU has also created a digital compass.
  • Vision: In addition, the EU has a vision document on the digital rights of the population that will be worked on until 2030.

All in all, the EU is ahead of the rest of the world in terms of rules and rights concerning the digital life of the population.

EU rules must be followed, whether it is giants such as Facebook, Google, or Microsoft or the websites of the local plumber.

Slightly less monitoring and manipulation

As far as Barnevakten understands, the fresh DSA rules state, among other things:

  • Direct marketing targeting children is not allowed.
  • Profiling of children is also not allowed.
  • It should be just as easy for consumers to say either yes or no to the collection of personal data, i.e., the companies can no longer make it difficult for you to find the no button.
  • If you say no to the collection of personal data about you, companies are not allowed to punish you by turning off features just for you.
  • It is also not allowed to use so-called “dark patterns” that trick or exhaust users into agreeing to services or collecting personal data. Repeated pop-up views can be an example of what’s forbidden, but it depends on how hectic the repetitions are.
  • E-commerce channels also need to make reasonable efforts to check that users aren’t selling anything illegal.
  • Consumers have been given a stronger right to act anonymously. Channel owners have a duty to make it possible to use and pay for services anonymously “where reasonable efforts can make this possible.”
  • The maximum limit of fines for breaching rules will be based on the turnover of the company worldwide. This means higher fines than if one takes the turnover in the country where the crime took place as a starting point.
  • The rules are stricter when it comes to tracking people’s sexual orientation, political views, ethnicity, membership of trade unions, and so on. This means that you should not receive direct advertising in these areas.
  • In apps intended for children, the terms should be written so that children understand them.
  • The DSA rules take into account that companies are of different sizes. The rules require less of small firms, such as a carpenter or an author who has a small website. More is required of companies that have large resources and perhaps their own employees who follow up the websites and digital services. The EU may require access to certain algorithms and will pay extra attention to actors reaching more than 10 percent of the EU population.

The DSA rules were adopted in the European Parliament on 20 January 2022. You can find it here. What it says in bold are amendments that were made at the end before it was adopted. There will surely come a fresh document in due course, and that will be easier to read. But if you go to the right column and article 52, you’ll see that children-targeted advertising is forbidden:

“Online platforms should also not use personal data for commercial purposes related to direct marketing, profiling and behaviorally targeted advertising of minors.”

 It says “should.” But it seems to be interpreted as a must the way Christel Schaldemose, the head of the project, wrote in her Twitter message: “Now there will be an end to targeted advertisements to minors online. Minors’ data should not be harvested and used for commercial purposes. We are going to put an end to it.”

Amendment 500 (proposed rules) reads: “Targeting or amplification techniques that process, reveal or infer minors’ personal data of minors or personal data referred to in Article 9(1) of Regulations (EU) 2016/679 for the purposed of displaying advertisements are prohibited.”

Section 52 continues: The online platform should not be obliged to maintain, acquire or process additional information in order to assess the age of the service.”  What this means in practice is not clear to say yet. When an app company creates profiles of its users, the company must somehow determine which of the users are children, since children should not be monitored. The wording may mean that it is the user, i.e., the child, who must inform the app that it is a child, in order to avoid being monitored.

To find what it says about children in the sections, you can search with the keyword “childor “minorinside the documents.

For example, amendment 188 states that apps and websites that target children must write the terms and conditions so that children understand them: “Where an intermediary service is primarily directed at minors or predominantly used by them, the provider shall explain conditions for and restrictions on the use of the service in a way that minors can understand.”

Digital vision with rights in Europe

The EU has created a vision for people’s rights to work on until 2030, called the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade.

Among other things, it says:

  • You shouldn’t be discriminated against online.
  • You should be notified when you encounter algorithms and artificial intelligence and these should not discriminate against you.
  • The EU will find a solution so that everyone can have a digital ID that provides access to digital services.
  • Public information should be readily available.
  • Your health information and health services should be able to be moved to different countries, if you wish.
  • Technology shouldn’t make important choices for you.
  • You should experience the freedom of speech without fear of being censored or intimidated.
  • Social media needs to make an effort to remove disinformation.
  • Service providers need to get better at age-appropriate content.

The text in the points above is Barnevakten’s wording, see the exact wording here and more here.

Norway’s digital strategy

In Norway, the Solberg government in 2021 created the strategy «Rett på nett» on the development of digital rights. It refers to the EU DSA rules, so you may expect many of the DSA sections to be included in Norwegian laws in due course. Here’s the strategy document.

Here are three of the sources for this article: Source 1, Source 2, Source 3.

(First published in Norwegian on 31 January 2022. Translated by Ratan Samadder)

(Main image at the top: Shutterstock / Cgstock / MNStudio / Barnevakten.)