An important part of the obligations imposed on intermediary service providers under the Digital Services Act is to report on the moderation of their users' content in order to ensure transparency. The European Commission has standardised the format, content and reporting periods by means of an implementing Regulation.
As from 17 February 2024 and at least once a year, all intermediary service providers must, in accordance with Articles 15, 24 and 42 of the DSA, publish publicly reports on all content moderation in a transparent, easily understandable and machine-readable format. The amount of information they must report depends on the type of intermediary service.
The reporting obligation does not apply to micro and small providers.
Scope of reporting by type of service
Providers of all types of intermediary services shall publish in their report, in addition to an identifier: information on the decisions of each Member State (and in aggregate) to take action against illegal content and to provide information (in accordance with Article 15(1a) of the DSA), meaningful and comprehensible information on the moderation of self-initiated content related to illegal content and non-compliance with the provider's terms and conditions (in accordance with Article 15(1) of the DSA), information on the moderation of self-initiated content related to illegal content, and information on the moderation of content related to illegal content (in accordance with Article 15(1) of the DSA).c of Article 15 of the DSA), information on the total number of complaints submitted through the internal complaint handling mechanism (in accordance with Article 15(1)(d) of the DSA), information on moderation of content by automated means (in accordance with Article 15(1)(b), (1)(c) and (1)(e) of the DSA), and a qualitative set of information (descriptive) on moderation of content (in accordance with the requirements of Article 15 of the DSA).
The template for completion is available in English at this link (sheets 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11, or wherever "All" is indicated in the 1st column of each sheet ). Instructions for completion and publication are available in Annex II at this link.
Hosting service providers, including online platforms, shall publish in their report, in addition to the report identifier, all that applies to all intermediary service providers (above), and additionally information on notifications submitted pursuant to Article 16 of the DSA.
The template for completion is available in English at this link (sheets 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11, or wherever "All" and "For hosting service providers only, including online platforms" are indicated in column 1 of each sheet ). Instructions for completion and publication are available in Annex II at this link.
Online platform providers shall publish in their report, in addition to the report identifier, all that applies to all intermediary service providers and hosting service providers and, in addition, more information on complaints submitted through the internal complaint handling mechanism (in accordance with Article 15(1d) of the DSA and Article 24(1a) and (b) of the DSA) and further information on moderation of content by automated means (in accordance with Article 15(1b), (1c) and (1e) of the DSA).
The template for completion is available in English at this link (sheets 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11, or wherever "All","For hosting providers only, including online platforms" and "For online platform providers only" are indicated in the 1st column of each sheet ). Instructions for completion and publication are available in Annex II at this link.
Online marketplace providers shall publish in their report the same scope of information as applies to online platform providers.
Providers of very large online platforms and very large search engines shall publish the maximum amount of information in their report. As there are currently no such providers in Slovenia, we do not provide the full scope of reporting for providers of these services here.
Format, reporting periods and retention
All reports must be made public and easily accessible in accordance with Annex II of the Regulation. They must be published in machine-readable Open Document Format (ODF) in CSV format (comma-separated values) as specified in Annex I.
The reporting period shall be from 1 January to 31 December, but more detailed transitional provisions are foreseen for 2024 and 2025 in which the deadlines and reporting periods are adjusted. The reports will have to be publicly available no later than two months after the end of each reporting period.
All providers must keep their transparency reports for at least five years after their publication and they must be publicly available for that period.