From Reports to Reality: Testing Consistency in Instagram's Digital Services Act Compliance Data

TL;DR

This paper develops a multi-level consistency framework to evaluate Instagram's compliance with the EU's Digital Services Act, highlighting the importance of ecosystem-wide evaluation for effective regulation and enforcement.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-level consistency framework for assessing platform compliance, emphasizing interconnected ecosystem analysis over isolated process evaluation.

Findings

Consistency helps detect compliance failures

Platforms should be evaluated as interconnected ecosystems

Framework aids regulators and platforms in improving reporting

Abstract

The Digital Services Act (DSA) introduces harmonized rules for content moderation and platform governance in the European Union, mandating robust compliance mechanisms, particularly for very large online platforms and search engines. This study examined compliance with DSA requirements, focusing on Instagram as a case study. We develop and apply a multi-level consistency framework to evaluate DSA compliance. Our findings contribute to the broader discussion on empirically-based regulation, providing insight into how researchers, regulators, auditors and platforms can better utilize DSA mechanisms to improve reporting and enforcement quality and accountability. This work underscores that consistency can help detect potential compliance failures. It also demonstrates that platforms should be evaluated as part of an interconnected ecosystem rather than through isolated processes, which is crucial for effective compliance evaluation under the DSA.