New appeals body to rule on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube complaints

Users of Facebook, TikTok and YouTube will soon be able to turn to Appeals Centre Europe, an independent body, to appeal against these platforms’ policy violation decisions.

The organisation announced on Tuesday that it received the green light from Irish regulator Coimisiún na Meán to be certified under the EU’s platform rules, the Digital Services Act (DSA), as a so-called out-of-court dispute settlement body.

Coimisiún na Meán is in charge of overseeing DSA compliance of platforms in Ireland. Most of the largest Big Tech companies have their headquarters in Dublin.

The Appeals Centre’s aim is to provide an alternative to “often costly and time-consuming legal routes to redress,” its statement said, and to reduce the burden on regulators and courts. 

It will be able to decide whether platforms’ decisions are consistent with their content policies, including any principles applied to those policies with reference to human rights.

It will initially deal with disputes from people and organisations in the EU, and only with Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, with the goal to add more over time. 

An “in-house team of experts will apply human review to every case,” their statement said, adding it will have expertise in specific regions, languages and policy areas.

“The emerging dispute settlement landscape in the European Union has enormous potential to empower people and communities by allowing them to challenge content decisions on social media platforms,” said Thomas Hughes, its CEO.

The centre will be located in Dublin, and the first disputes from social media users are expected to arrive before the end of this year. 

Once launched, the Centre will be funded through fees charged to social media companies for each case. Users who raise a dispute will only pay a nominal fee, which is refunded if the Appeals Centre’s decision is in their favour. 

The DSA – which became applicable to all online platforms last February – obliges platforms to take content moderation and transparency measures. 

The European Commission has so far designated 25 online platforms and search engines as Very Large Online Platforms because they reach the threshold of 45 million active users per month.

The Commission oversees compliance with the rules of the biggest 25 companies, the smaller ones are being looked after by national regulators. The EU executive has so far filed numerous requests for information, as well as probes into compliance of AliExpress, Meta, TikTok and X.