Seeing outside the (black) box: From algorithmic transparency to platform observability in the Digital Services Act

Algorithmic transparency is high on the agenda for social media regulation. But recent work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) questions whether this endeavour of ‘opening the black box’ is feasible or even meaningful, due to the sociotechnical contingency of platform behaviour. Bernhard Rieder and Jeannette Hoffman have therefore proposed a move from algorithmic transparency to platform observability; a pragmatic program aimed at securing structural, real-time access to the means of platform knowledge production. Taking a legal perspective, this paper examines the data access provisions of the EU’s new Digital Services Act (DSA), and how these can be understood as an early attempt to surpass the algorithmic explanation paradigm and to start regulating for and with observability. In doing so, however, the DSA surfaces important challenges for observability regulation. Regulating for observability faces trade-offs between inclusiveness and depth of access, as well as line-drawing problems around the publicness of user content. And in regulating with observability, tensions arise between observability’s direct role in law enforcement and its more indirect role in knowledge production and public discourse. Paddy Leerssen argues for a loose coupling between observability and regulation, and against the tendency to reduce data access to mere compliance monitoring.

Paddy Leerssen is a postdoctoral legal researcher at the University of Amsterdam. His work focuses on social media governance, with a particular emphasis on questions of transparency and data access. Paddy is part of the Institute for Information Law (IViR’s) DSA Observatory project, which monitors the implementation of the EU’s new Digital Services Act.

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