DIGITAL SERVICES ACT (DSA)
GENERAL BACKGROUND
Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (the Digital Services Act, or “DSA” in short), effective as of November 2022, is a comprehensive piece of legislation for consumer protection.
The DSA focuses on content governance and moderation and applies to various online services.
The DSA addresses several critical aspects related to online services, including:
- Providing a consistent framework for digital services offered in the EU.
- Preventing illegal and harmful activities.
- Protecting service recipients’ fundamental rights.
The DSA applies various obligations on providers of online services, including:
- Due diligence obligations, requiring online services to apply proactive measures to prevent illegal content.
- Transparency obligations, requiring online services to disclose their content moderation and advertising practices.
- Notices and complaints handling requirement, under which online services must provide their users with efficient mechanisms to enable them to submit notices and complaints.
- Cooperation obligations, requiring providers of online services to cooperate with law enforcement and regulatory authorities.
The terms on this page apply to you when you receive any of Digital Turbine’s hosting services under the DSA.
DSA POINT OF CONTACT
Digital Turbine’s DSA Point of Contact is our Chief Privacy Officer, available at dsa@digitalturbine.com.
Digital Turbine’s DSA Point of Contact may be contacted in the following languages: English and German.
LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE IN THE EU
As Digital Turbine is not established in the European Union (EU), it has designated the following legal representative to act in our name in the EU (“EU Representative”):
Fyber GmbH |
Wallstraße 9-13, 10179 Berlin, Germany |
+493060985550 |
dsa@digitalturbine.com
|
Germany |
English and German |
CONTENT RESPONSIBILITY, SERVICE RESTRICTIONS AND MODERATION
Where the DSA applies, the following restrictions apply to your use of Digital Turbine’s hosting services:
Content Responsibility
All information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials (“Content”), publicly posted or privately transmitted on your behalf within the service, are your sole responsibility.
This means that you, not the service, are entirely responsible for all Content you upload, post, email, transmit, or otherwise make available via the service.
Content Restrictions
You may not use the service to:
- make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically, or otherwise objectionable.
- harm minors in any way.
- impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity.
- forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any Content you store or transmit through the service.
- make available any Content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships.
- make available any Content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights of any person or entity.
- make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes,” or any other form of solicitation;
- make available any material that contains viruses or any other computer code, files, or programs designed to interrupt, destroy, or limit the functionality of any software, hardware, or telecommunications equipment.
- disrupt the normal flow of dialogue, cause a screen to “scroll” faster than other users of the service are able to type, or otherwise act in a manner that negatively affects other users’ ability to engage in real-time exchanges, where applicable.
- interfere with or disrupt the service or servers or networks connected to the service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies, or regulations of networks connected to the service.
- Engage in any activity in violation of applicable law.
- “stalk” or otherwise harass another.
Content Moderation
Our services may employ a combination of algorithmic decision-making and human review measures to moderate content.
While we strive to ensure the accuracy and fairness of our moderation, we acknowledge that no system is perfect.
Accordingly, we are continuously working to improve our moderation tools and appreciate your understanding and cooperation.
Our moderation tools include:
Automated Moderation: The DT Exchange operates based on OpenRTB protocol by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) that enables Digital Turbine’s ad exchange to block unwanted and illegal content automatically as outlined in our content guidelines available here (“Content Guidelines”):
Human Review: Some content may be reviewed by our team of human moderators, trained to uphold our terms and conditions and review content fairly and impartially.
Content Removal and Explanation
As part of our commitment to transparency and fairness in our moderation process, and as required under applicable law, if we remove Content provided by you, we will also provide you with a statement of our reasons for doing so. Click here for additional information.
Internal Complaint Handling System
If you believe your content has been unfairly moderated or removed, or if you wish to report a potential violation of our terms and conditions, you may use our Internal Complaint Handling System by contacting our DSA Point of Contact.
Please provide as much detail as possible about the issue and your content.
Our team will review your complaint and take appropriate action. We strive to handle all complaints in a timely and fair manner.
Content Review
Please note that we have the right to pre-screen, refuse, move, alter, or remove any Content on our service.
Without limiting the foregoing, we reserve the right to remove any Content that violates our Content Guidelines or that is otherwise objectionable.
By using our services, you agree that you must evaluate and bear all risks associated with your use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such Content.
Notices of Illegal Content
If you become aware of any Content that you believe to be illegal, you can notify us of such illegal Content by contacting our DSA Point of Contact.
To be able to review your notice, we will need you to include the following information:
- a sufficiently substantiated explanation of why you think that the Content is illegal.
- a clear indication of the exact electronic location of that information, such as the exact URL, or where not possible, a screenshot, and any additional information that can help us identify the relevant Content.
- Your name and email address, unless you are contacting us in connection with Content related to offenses concerning sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, child pornography, solicitation of children for sexual purposes, or inciting, aiding, abetting, or attempting offenses of such nature.
- a statement confirming your bona fide belief that the Content and the allegations contained in your notice are accurate and complete.
Note that in certain cases, we may need to include your identity in the Statements of Reasons sent to the service recipient who made the Content in question available! Click here for additional information.
Statements of Reasons
As detailed above, we may restrict Content and the service if we determine that certain Content violates applicable law. Such restrictions may include:
- restricting the visibility of specific Content, including by removing it, disabling access to it, or demoting it.
- suspending, terminating, or otherwise restricting monetary payments.
- suspending or terminating our service provision to you, in whole or in part.
- suspending or terminating your service account, if available on the service.
As part of our commitment to transparency and fairness in our moderation process, and as required under applicable law, if we apply the above restrictions, we will also provide the service user that provided such Content with a statement of our reasons for doing so.
Our statement of reasons will include information on:
- whether we decided to restrict Content, suspend, or terminate monetary payments related to the Content, or any other measure detailed above.
- whether our decision is limited to a specific territory and the scope of such territory.
- the facts and circumstances on which we relied when making our decision.
- where relevant, whether the decision was taken following a notice submitted to us by another recipient of our service or based on our own initiated investigations.
- only where strictly necessary and relevant, the identity of the service recipient who notified us of the Content in question.
- where applicable, our use of automated means in making the decision, including whether the Content was detected or identified using automated means.
- if our decision concerns allegedly illegal Content, a reference to the legal ground relied on, and explanations as to why we consider the Content illegal.
- if our decision was based on the alleged incompatibility of the Content with our Terms and Conditions, a reference to the contractual ground relied on, and explanations as to why we consider the Content incompatible.
- your possibilities for redress through our Internal Complaint Handling System and judicial redress.
PRESENTING ADS
If you run ad campaigns and present advertisements (e.g., as a DSP, advertiser, or agency) (“Ads”), either via our services or via third-party services, you must ensure that:
- Each Ad contains, in real-time and in a clear, concise, and unambiguous manner:
- An indication that the Ad is an Ad and/or that it contains commercial communications.
- Details about the natural or legal person on whose behalf the Ad is presented and the natural or legal person who paid for the Ad, if it’s a different person.
- Meaningful information about the main parameters used to determine the service recipient presented with the Ad and, where applicable, about how to change those parameters.
- To support your compliance with the DSA requirements, Digital Turbine will implement the following in its services (as applicable):
- Each Ad contains, in real-time and in a clear, concise, and unambiguous manner:
- An indication that the Ad is an Ad and contains commercial communications.
- The domain name of the advertiser on whose behalf the Ad is presented and the DSP name.
- A link to the “Why did I get this Ad?” page with meaningful information about the main parameters used to determine the service recipient presented with the Ad.
- You do not use our services to present Ads containing illegal Content or Content that violates our Content Guidelines.
Note that you are responsible for ensuring that Ads presented on your behalf meet the DSA’s requirements. DT assumes no responsibility or liability with respect to your compliance with the DSA, including with respect to Ad Content,
If you use our services to enable others to present Ads on your online properties (for example, your Apps), you must ensure that:
- You do not present Ads based on profiling using special categories of personal data (within the meaning of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (“GDPR”)) on our services, such as data about an individual racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, person’s sex life or sexual orientation and criminal convictions.
- You do not present Ads based on profiling of minors (i.e., individuals under the age of 18) using any personal data (within the meaning of the GDPR). To support your compliance with this DSA requirement, Digital Turbine is advising publishers to extend their use of the “child flag” (i.e., Android: “currentAudienceAppliesToCoppa,” iOS: “coppaApplies”) whenever the user is a minor in the EU.
To support your compliance with the DSA, we have implemented measures to block behavioral Ads targeted to minors. To enable such support, publishers are required to provide us with a signal indicating that an end-user is a minor.
Note that the publishers are responsible for ensuring that Ads presented on their online properties via our service meet the DSA’s requirements. DT assumes no responsibility or liability with respect to publishers’ compliance with the DSA, including with respect to how Ads are presented.
We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to remove any Ads that we consider to contain Content that violates our Content Guidelines or applicable law.
USING RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS
If you use our services as Recommender Systems, within the meaning of the DSA, you must ensure that you include the following under your own service’s terms and conditions:
- The main parameters used to determine the Content suggested.
- An explanation of why certain Content is suggested to a service recipient, including at least the most significant criteria in determining the Content suggested and the reasons for the relative importance of such parameters.
- Any options for service recipients to modify or influence those main parameters.
- If you offer several options to users, you also need to ensure that they can select and modify their preferred option.