The question of whether your organisation qualifies as an online platform under the EU’s Digital Services Act isn’t as straightforward as you might expect. It’s one of those regulatory puzzles that keeps compliance teams busy, and frankly, the implications go far beyond just ticking boxes on a compliance checklist.
Since the DSA became fully applicable across all EU member states on 17 February 2024, figuring out your classification has shifted from “nice to know” to “absolutely essential.” Your platform status doesn’t just determine what paperwork you need to file. It shapes your entire compliance framework and, more importantly, your potential exposure to penalties that can reach up to 6% of global annual turnover. For organisations working within the European digital advertising ecosystem, getting this assessment right has become a fundamental business requirement.
Who qualifies as a platform under the DSA?
The Digital Services Act doesn’t treat all digital services the same way. Think of it as a regulatory ladder where your obligations get more complex as you climb higher. Online platforms sit somewhere in the middle of this ladder, with more responsibilities than basic hosting providers but fewer than the tech giants designated as Very Large Online Platforms and Very Large Search Engines.
Here’s where things get technical, but it’s worth understanding the exact wording. Article 3 of the DSA defines online platforms as “hosting service[s] that, at the request of a recipient of the service, store[s] and disseminate[s] information to the public.“
Notice the two key elements here: storage and dissemination. It’s not enough to just store user content somewhere on your servers. You also need to be actively making that content available to other people. That combination is what pushes you from hosting territory into platform territory.
The European Commission hasn’t left companies guessing about what this looks like in practice. They’ve provided a few concrete examples: “online marketplaces, social networks, content-sharing platforms, app stores, and online travel and accommodation platforms.” While these categories don’t cover the entirety of the online platform market, each of these examples shows the same pattern: they don’t just store user content, they actively help spread it or connect people through it.
While the European Commission does not provide a comprehensive list of businesses falling within this definition, here are a few examples of categories of companies that are likely to qualify as an Online Platform:
▶ Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are textbook examples. Users upload their posts, photos, and videos, and these platforms make that content visible to friends, followers, or sometimes the entire internet. The platforms aren’t just digital storage lockers; they’re actively distributing content through feeds, recommendations, and discovery features.
▶ Online Marketplaces
Online marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay work similarly, just with commercial content instead of personal posts. Sellers upload product listings, and the marketplace makes those listings discoverable to millions of potential buyers. The platform becomes the bridge connecting supply with demand, facilitating both discovery and transactions.
▶ App Stores
App stores operated by Apple, Google, and others follow the same pattern. Developers submit their applications, and the app store makes them publicly available for download. These platforms curate, categorise, and distribute software, often adding their own recommendation algorithms to help users discover new apps.
▶ Content-Sharing Platforms
Content-sharing platforms like YouTube or Pinterest demonstrate another flavour of this model. YouTube stores videos uploaded by creators and distributes them through its recommendation engine and search functionality. Pinterest hosts images and short videos for users to discover, save and organise through its platform interface. Both are clearly doing more than just storing files.
▶ Travel and Accommodation Platforms
Online travel and accommodation platforms such as Booking.com or Airbnb showcase how this applies beyond pure content. They store accommodation listings provided by hosts and help travellers discover and book these properties. The transaction facilitation element makes their platform status even clearer.
Exclusions and Limitations
Now, before you start panicking about every user-generated feature on your website, the DSA includes some important breathing room. The regulation specifies that hosting services shouldn’t be considered platforms “where the dissemination to the public is merely a minor and purely ancillary feature that is intrinsically linked to another service” (Rec. 13).
Examples of Non-Platform Services
To illustrate this, think about a news website with a comments section. Those comments are technically user-generated content that gets displayed publicly, but the DSA recognises this as “ancillary to the main service represented by the publication of news under the editorial responsibility of the publisher” (Rec. 13). The comment feature serves the journalism, not the other way around.
Similarly, if you’re running a SaaS tool that happens to have a user forum for customer support, that forum probably doesn’t transform your entire service into a platform, assuming it’s clearly secondary to your main business function.
Geographical Scope and Jurisdiction
Here’s something that catches many companies off guard: your company’s physical location doesn’t determine whether you’re subject to the DSA. The regulation applies to “to intermediary services offered to recipients of the service that have their place of establishment or are located in the Union, irrespective of where the providers of those intermediary services have their place of establishment” (Art. 2). If you’re serving users in the EU, you’re potentially in scope, regardless of whether your headquarters are in California, Singapore, or Surrey.
Common Misunderstandings
The complexity around DSA classification has spawned some persistent myths that keep circulating in industry discussions. Let’s tackle the most common ones, because these misconceptions can lead companies down some expensive paths.
“Only the tech giants need to worry about this”
This is probably the most dangerous assumption floating around. Yes, Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines (those with over 45 million monthly active users) face additional requirements, but that doesn’t mean smaller platforms get a free pass. The DSA applies to all intermediary services offered in the EU, with minor exceptions for micro and small enterprises. Your user count affects the level of obligations, not whether you have obligations at all.
“We only serve businesses, so we’re exempt”
Many B2B platform operators assume they’re safely outside DSA territory because they don’t deal with consumers. This assumption misses how broadly the DSA defines its scope. The regulation covers intermediary services offered to recipients of the service in the EU, with recipients of the service including “business users, consumers and other users” (Rec. 2).Therefore, in addition to B2C platforms, pure B2B platforms are also covered by the DSA. Whether you’re connecting consumers to products or businesses to other businesses, the platform mechanics work the same way.
“We’re just cloud storage, so we’re automatically a platform”
This misconception goes the opposite direction. Some hosting providers worry they’ve been swept into platform obligations simply because they store user data. The DSA provides clarity here: “cloud computing or web-hosting services should not be considered to be an online platform where dissemination of specific information to the public constitutes a minor and ancillary feature or a minor functionality of such services” (Rec. 13). If you’re primarily providing storage without actively facilitating public access to that content, you’re likely still in hosting territory.
“Our internal communication features make us a platform”
Companies with team collaboration tools or customer messaging systems sometimes worry these features trigger platform classification. But there’s an important distinction between private and public communication. “Interpersonal communication services […], such as emails or private messaging services, fall outside the scope of the definition of online platforms as they are used for interpersonal communication between a finite number of persons determined by the sender of the communication. However, the obligations […] may apply to services that allow the making available of information to a potentially unlimited number of recipients, not determined by the sender of the communication, such as through public groups or open channels” (Rec. 14). The key question is whether your service facilitates public rather than private communication.
“We just provide the technology; we’re not responsible for how it’s used”
Some companies try to position themselves as neutral technology providers, arguing they shouldn’t be responsible for platform-like activities their users engage in. The DSA doesn’t accept this argument. The regulation takes a service-related view rather than accepting business model descriptions. What matters is how your service actually functions and what users experience, not how you describe your business model in pitch decks.
“Our terms of service can exclude us from these rules”
Companies can’t simply write themselves out of DSA obligations through creative legal language. Classification depends on your service’s technical functionalities and actual operation, not what your legal team says in the terms of service.
Check if you are a platform under the DSA
The legal definition of “online platform” contains enough ambiguity to challenge even experienced compliance professionals when applied to real-world business models. The language around dissemination, public access, and ancillary functionality requires careful analysis of how your service actually works and how users interact with it. This makes it essential for each organisation to bring in qualified legal counsel to properly assess whether their services fall within DSA scope.
This gets particularly tricky for organisations running multiple services, which may individually fall under different areas of the DSA. You might find some of your services qualify as platforms whilst others remain in hosting or other categories.
The stakes here are significant. The European Commission can impose fines up to 6% of global turnover for non-compliance. Considering the competitive pressures within the European digital advertising landscape, we strongly encourage organisations to prioritise this assessment process and engage appropriate legal and technical expertise to ensure they fully understand their regulatory position.
