Automating DSA enforcement: A Socio-Technical framework for transparency compliance

Abstract

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is a landmark law aiming to make online platforms more transparent, accountable, and safe for users. But effective enforcement of the DSA poses significant challenges due to the scale of digital platforms and the complexity of their operations. This article presents a socio-technical legal framework designed to automate aspects of DSA enforcement, focusing on transparency obligations as a measurable and accessible starting point. The proposed framework combines legal analysis with computing techniques, such as web data extraction, natural language processing, and logic-based rule modelling, to continuously monitor platform compliance and designed to provide technological support to authorities and privates engaged in inspection and monitoring activities. By formalising DSA requirements into computable rules and developing tools to detect and report non- compliance, the approach seeks to bridge the gap between regulatory objectives and practical oversight capabilities. Case studies on selected DSA provisions (including obligations for contact points, terms of service clarity, transparency reports, notice-and-action systems, and advertising and recommender transparency) illustrate how the framework operates across different compliance areas. The article emphasises clarity and cross-disciplinary accessibility, aiming to foster dialogue between legal, policy, business, and technical stakeholders, and suggesting how regulatory automation tools can support authorities and platforms in upholding the DSA, and potentially other digital regulations, by providing scalable, objective, and transparent enforcement mechanisms.1