Ms Niamh Hodnett:

In respect of our first draft online safety code, we propose recommender systems to be a supplementary measure and therefore, not one of the suites of measures to be included under the audiovisual media services directive or our Act. However, the Digital Services Act does call out recommender systems. It is already a binding obligation for the large platforms, for example, to deal with the mitigation of harmful content as part of their need to do a risk assessment of their platforms and to introduce mitigation measures.

These are binding obligations already imposed on the very large online platforms under Articles 34 and 35 of the Digital Services Act. In addition, Article 28 places an obligation on all platforms to address the safety of minors.