DIGITAL SERVICES ACT
hosting services to establish mechanisms through which individuals and entities can notify them of specific items of information that they consider to be illegal content. However, the illegality of gambling-related content is not necessarily apparent from the content itself. Determining whether an operator is authorised to provide gambling services to consumers in a particular member state may require verification against national licensing registers and an understanding of the territorial scope of the relevant license. The gap therefore lies not in the absence of legal authority, but in the structural interaction between the DSA’s horizontal, cross-sectoral framework and the predominantly national regulation of gambling, which may constrain the practical effectiveness of those powers. Article 22 8 offers a partial answer. It allows entities with recognised expertise in identifying categories of illegal content to be designated as trusted flaggers, whose notices platforms must prioritise. The Commission has said that trusted flaggers are meant to bring exactly this kind of specialized expertise, and gambling is a strong candidate for the mechanism, since licensing illegality is inherently jurisdiction-specific rather than something a generalist can assess. The catch is that the mechanism only helps where suitably specialized trusted flaggers exist, with the geographic reach and capacity to cover the relevant markets. Where they do not, Article 22 mitigates the gap, it does not close it. The DSA’s framework presents a second area of difficulty. Article 15 9 requires providers of intermediary services to publish periodic reports concerning their content-moderation activities, including information on notices received, orders issued by national authorities and measures taken in response to content-moderation decisions. VLOPs and VLOSEs are subject to enhanced and more frequent reporting obligations. The Commission has subsequently harmonised the format of these reports, with the first harmonised reporting cycle beginning in 2026. These measures improve formal
comparability, but they do not necessarily produce the sector- specific visibility needed to evaluate enforcement against unlicensed gambling. The difficulty, however, is that these transparency obligations do not necessarily require gambling-related content to be reported as a distinct category. Consequently, publicly available transparency data may not readily reveal the volume of notices concerning unlicensed gambling, the proportion of such notices resulting in removal, or the average time taken to respond to them. This limits the extent to which the DSA’s transparency framework can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of platform enforcement specifically in relation to illegal gambling. The problem is therefore less one of complete regulatory opacity than of a consequential accountability deficit. Without sufficient sector-specific transparency, it is difficult to assess whether the formal mechanisms in place required by the DSA are working effectively in practice. A similar issue arises under the systemic-risk framework applicable to VLOPs and VLOSEs. Article 34 10 requires these services to identify, analyze and assess systemic risks arising from the functioning and use of their services, including risks relating to the dissemination of illegal content and negative effects on the protection of minors. Article 35 11 ubsequently requires platforms to implement reasonable, proportionate and effective mitigation measures in response to the identified risks. The framework is therefore potentially powerful, but it remains dependent on how platforms define, prioritize and evidence the risks they identify. Nevertheless, the DSA does not treat gambling as a risk category. Whether gambling-related risks receive significant attention is therefore left to each platform´s own risk assessment. That does not mean that platforms are free to disregard gambling-related risks. Where such risks are relevant to the dissemination of illegal content, protection of minors or other systemic risks identified by Article 34, they fall within the broader framework. The DSA provides, therefore, general obligations
8 Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market for Digital Services (Digital Services Act), OJ L 277, 27 October 2022, Art. 22 9 Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market for Digital Services (Digital Services Act), OJ L 277, 27 October 2022, Art. 15 10 Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market for Digital Services (Digital Services Act), OJ L 277, 27 October 2022, Art. 34 11 Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market for Digital Services (Digital Services Act), OJ L 277, 27 October 2022, Art. 35
IMGL MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 2026
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