On April 22, the European Union (EU) passed landmark legislation called the Digital Services Act (DSA) that has the potential to transform societal harms caused by social media companies to residents of the European Union. Facing recent worldwide crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, rising nationalism and racism, and the war in Ukraine, European lawmakers recognized the need to be able to respond quickly during a health crisis or threat to the national security of a nation. The DSA will, among other things:

Require online platforms such as Facebook, Google, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube to police, and create an “easy and effective way” for users to flag, harmful information, disinformation, and misinformation on their platform for removal, such as child sexual abuse, commercial scams, hate speech, terroristic content, misleading political advertising lacking, and other content deemed “illegal” by the various member states of the European Union (content that is illegal in one European Union country may not be illegal in all member counties—for example, Nazi content is illegal in Germany, but not all countries).