Is the EU visitor stats the one with reduced info (no table for 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days etc.)? I’m curious, what rule within the DSA does this address? I’m surprised that high-level aggregated stats can be problematic in the EU…
The Digital Services Act requires that online platform hosts publish their “average monthly active recipients of the service” in the EU over the past six months. Discourse forum owners with EU visitors are going to have to comply.
The numbers have to update at least every six months, and they have to go on a public part of the service’s UI—for Discourse forums, a public page of the forums.
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It can be fun to see how many EU-citizens there is, but I, as an part of EU, don’t need it. Yes. Discourse as a platform defenetly needs it because its major players may need it, but this regulation is made mainly for gate keepers [1] Meta, X, TikTok etc.
Of course it is easier enable that setting and then forget it.
If someone like S/M-livestyle then this chapter is one starting point to dive in and start looking for more reasons and context:
This Regulation should apply only to intermediary services and not affect requirements set out in Union or national law relating to products or services intermediated through intermediary services, including in situations where the intermediary service constitutes an integral part of another service which is not an intermediary service as recognised in the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
because in some context those are called as hate keepers ↩︎
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Thanks. EU regulation is so annoying. First the rules which lead to cookie banners everywhere and a huge compliance burden to smaller operators.
Now this pointless rule. And AI rules yet to come…
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We are off topic, but because USA didn’t do that regulation in the beginning they are now in panic situation where they do a bit there, a bit here and are ballistic because of TikTok.
EU regulations are really easy:
- tell what you do and why
- don’t screw users
- do same moderation what you do or should do in a forum anyway
US regulation is actually more confusing. Something is regulated by federal level, some are by states and I bet there is some more local rules too. And because of common law system everything is ruled case by case, not because of purpose.
It’s actually similar in the EU. The EU can sometimes issue directives, which then each country has to implement - unfortunately, they implement and interpret in their own ways. So you have potentially 27 different versions of a law written in 2 dozen different languages.
There is four different levels. A directive is second strongest order issued by the union that does not come into force as such in each member state. The directive guides the internal legislation of the member states, as each country chooses how it implements the provisions and objectives of the directive.
That act is not a directive.
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Quick tip: when you enable display_eu_visitor_stats, EU stats initally show “NaN”… but you can open /sidekiq/scheduler and trigger the job Jobs::AboutStats to refresh things. (The job appears to normally run every 30 minutes.)
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As of this PR, you don’t need to do this anymore. The stat will not be shown at all until there is a number to show.
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I’ve only had a skim using the phone, so might have missed something, but the legislation you cited, Article 24(2), doesn’t apply to “micro and small enterprises”: see Article 19(1). I imagine in practice that entities that are smaller then the size threshold would be excluded even if they don’t count as enterprises. Maybe the answer to that is stated elsewhere.
Article 19 states:
Exclusion for micro and small enterprises
This Section, with the exception of Article 24(3) thereof, shall not apply to providers of online platforms that qualify as micro or small enterprises as defined in Recommendation 2003/361/EC.
This Section, with the exception of Article 24(3) thereof, shall not apply to providers of online platforms that previously qualified for the status of a micro or small enterprise as defined in Recommendation 2003/361/EC during the 12 months following their loss of that status pursuant to Article 4(2) thereof, except when they are very large online platforms in accordance with Article 33.
By derogation from paragraph 1 of this Article, this Section shall apply to providers of online platforms that have been designated as very large online platforms in accordance with Article 33, irrespective of whether they qualify as micro or small enterprises.
Recommendation 2003/361/EC states:
DEFINITION OF MICRO, SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES ADOPTED BY THE COMMISSION
Article 1
Enterprise
An enterprise is considered to be any entity engaged in an economic activity, irrespective of its legal form. This includes, in particular, self-employed persons and family businesses engaged in craft or other activities, and partnerships or associations regularly engaged in an economic activity.
Article 2
Staff headcount and financial ceilings determining enterprise categories
The category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is made up of enterprises which employ fewer than 250 persons and which have an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million, and/or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 43 million.
Within the SME category, a small enterprise is defined as an enterprise which employs fewer than 50 persons and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 10 million.
Within the SME category, a microenterprise is defined as an enterprise which employs fewer than 10 persons and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 2 million.
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Correct – there are some organisations that it won’t apply to and others for which it will. We have made it available to everyone because we don’t have visibility into who specifically needs it. We host forums for many organisations that are not in the micro/small category.
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