Since the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into force, we have been working hard to adapt our long-standing safety and integrity systems and processes in the areas regulated by the DSA. In 2023, we assembled a cross-functional team consisting of over 1,000 people to develop solutions to the DSA’s requirements. These included measures to increase transparency about how our systems work, and to give people more options to tailor their experiences on Facebook and Instagram. Over the course of the last year we have continued to bolster our systems and processes, including, for example, introducing new measures to counter potential risks posed by Generative AI content.
Today, we are publishing a series of reports that track our progress, including from an independent audit of Facebook and Instagram, which evaluated the measures we have implemented to comply with the DSA. As part of this process, we created a dedicated team of more than 40 people to support the audit. This team spent more than 20,000 hours, producing documents, completing requests for information, and conducting meetings with the independent auditor. This doesn’t include the thousands of additional hours spent by the wider team building, implementing and running the solutions we have in place to comply with the DSA’s requirements.
This is a process we have engaged with seriously and thoroughly, and we welcome the opportunity to share the findings.
Our progress complying with the DSA
The audit found Meta had solutions in place for all 54 sub-articles that received conclusions, with over 90% of those found to be fully compliant. The remaining 10% were concluded as “except for”, meaning the auditor believed that certain adjustments were needed for the solutions to fully meet the requirement under the DSA. Meta did not receive any “adverse” conclusions, meaning nothing met the threshold to be considered fully non-compliant.
There were a further 14 sub-articles that the auditor was not able to provide a formal conclusion for as those sub-articles are currently under investigation by the European Commission. We remain in conversation with the Commission about this, and believe we have solutions in place that comply with the requirements under the DSA.
Making adjustments where necessary
There were five “except for” findings across Facebook and Instagram, in three broad categories, where the auditor concluded that implementation did not fully meet the requirement.
Two of these have been addressed already. One in April 2024, related to Meta’s Ad Library, which was missing context regarding why certain ads were taken down. The other in February 2024, in which users of Facebook Dating were not offered an option to choose not to see recommended content based on their activity on our apps.
For the three remaining findings, the audit concluded that Meta needed to provide additional information in parts of our DSA Transparency Report, such as breaking down the content moderation measures we take by type of violation. We are working on solutions to address these findings, as set out in our Implementation Reports, which detail our plans to implement the various recommendations set out in the audit.
A journey of continuous improvement
From early on, we’ve been supportive of the objectives of the DSA and the creation of a harmonised regulatory regime that effectively protects people’s rights online, while continuing to enable innovation. We have had productive conversations with the European Commission throughout this process and we look forward to continuing to work transparently as the DSA develops.
The results of the independent audit, in combination with our accompanying Implementation Reports, show that Meta has measures in place for all areas in scope of the audit. In the small number of instances where adjustments were recommended, steps have been taken and changes made. This is testament to our ongoing investment in safety and security, and the work undertaken by thousands of employees at Meta to address requirements under the DSA. We know there will always be more work to do and we will continue to use conclusions from these annual audits to enhance our systems and protect our users.