The European Union (EU) Digital Services Act (DSA) entered into force on November 16, 2022. The DSA creates obligations for online platforms to reduce harms and counter risks online. The DSA intends to protect consumers and their fundamental rights online, establish a transparency and accountability framework for online platforms, and foster innovation, growth and competitiveness.
Under the DSA, online platforms are required to publish by February 17, 2023 “information on the average monthly active recipients” of their service in the EU, calculated as an average over a 6-month period. Platforms with over 45 million average monthly active EU recipients (which represents 10% of the EU population) are subject to designation by the European Commission as a “very large online platform” (VLOP), which must comply with additional regulatory requirements.
Depop has calculated its average monthly active recipients in the EU from the period of August 1, 2022 through January 31, 2023, which Depop views as falling well below the 45 million user threshold to be considered a VLOP.
This calculation includes what Depop determines to the best of its ability to be unique users located in the EU that actually engaged with its online platform. Actual engagement with Depop’s services excludes incidental use of its service (such as by recipients of other intermediary service providers that indirectly make Depop’s content available) and also excludes automated users such as bots or scrapers.
Depop will monitor the number of average monthly active recipients of its services in the EU and will publish updated information at least every 6 months.