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Platform terms under the Digital Services Act

For a service that stores and shows content its users upload: a community, a forum, a photo or video platform, a marketplace.

Example request

We run a free community for hobby photographers in the EU and the US. Users upload photos, comment and send
direct messages. It is funded by contextual and personalised ads. Minimum age 16, checked by self-declared
birth date. Please draft the terms of service, the content moderation policy, the notice and complaint flows,
and what our product has to implement.

What the skill does

  • Classification. The skill decides whether the service is a hosting service, an online platform or a very large online platform under the Digital Services Act, from the facts you give, and states the provision that decides it.
  • Terms (Article 14). The terms describe moderation policies, tools and the complaint procedure in plain language, and users are told of significant changes.
  • Notice and action (Article 16). Anyone can report content electronically; the form collects what the Regulation lists, and the notifier gets a confirmation and a decision.
  • Statement of reasons (Article 17). Every removal, demotion or suspension comes with the reasons the Regulation requires.
  • Complaints and disputes (Articles 20 and 21). A free internal complaint system for at least six months after a decision, decided with human review, and information about certified out-of-court dispute settlement.
  • Trusted flaggers and misuse (Articles 22 and 23). Priority for trusted flaggers and a written policy for suspending people who misuse the service or the reporting tools.
  • Advertising (Articles 26 and 28). Ad labels with the advertiser and the main targeting parameters, a way for users to mark their own commercial posts, and no profiling-based ads to users known to be minors.
  • US. Section 230 and the DMCA safe harbor with a designated agent for copyright notices.
  • Size thresholds. The exemption for micro and small enterprises and the duties of very large platforms depend on numbers. The skill applies them only from the facts you gave and never fills in a figure the references do not state.

Documents

Terms of service, content moderation policy, notice and complaint flows, privacy and cookie notices where needed, annotations, open points and an implementation register for the upload flow, report button, complaint and appeal screens and ad labels.

See the full platform example.