The adoption of the EU Digital Services Act1 (hereinafter the DSA) aimed to create a safe online information environment, specifically within the EU/EEA area. The aim of this research was to measure the effects of the DSA in curbing the spread of harmful content on social media. As measuring the results of such a broad goal was challenging, our study focused on one of the dominant social media platforms: Facebook. To assess the impact of the DSA, we compared the share of harmful content2 published by Polish and Lithuanian accounts on Facebook before and after the DSA entered into force.
Our multi-stage approach involved using a small AI model, GPT-4o mini, to initially flag harmful content, followed by applying larger models for validating and in-depth reasoning. In total we classified 959 harmful posts from 2023 and 1,392 posts from 2024.
As a result, the study demonstrated that despite certain improvements the platform made in creating a safe online environment, we could not claim an overall enhancement after DSA enforcement. Additionally, our results highlight the current vulnerabilities and areas for improvement that the platform should address.
