Testing DSA Systemic Risk Assessment in Vulnerable Contexts: Within X’s “Undressing” chatbot and TikTok’s addictive design features

  • Workshop
  • Board Room
  • Thursday 21.05 — 16:00 - 17:15

Organising Institution

TU Delft

Netherlands

We examine the Digital Services Act’s systemic risk assessment obligations through the lens of social media users in vulnerable positions. Participants work with two case studies inspired by X’s “undressing” feature and TikTok’s addictive design to test a toolkit for identifying potential negative effects on fundamental rights while explicitly accounting for vulnerability. Participants are divided into interdisciplinary groups based on expertise. Each group runs the case through a prepared decision tree, surfacing key tensions in DSA systemic risk assessment and translating them into actionable guidance. Groups will identify and prioritise systemic risks and affected rights, specify what evidence regulators should request to substantiate platform claims, and propose mitigation and monitoring steps that regulators can operationalise. The workshop produces concrete outputs: draft regulator-facing guidelines and an annotated decision tree showing where the tool supports consistent assessment and where gaps or ambiguities remain that require further policymaker attention.

Host

Gianclaudio Malgieri

Leiden University - Netherlands

Dr. Gianclaudio Malgieri is an Associate Professor of Law & Technology and a Board Member at eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies. He serves as the Honorary Director of the Brussels Privacy Hub, Free University of Brussels (VUB), and as the Managing Editor of Computer Law and Security Review, an External Ethics Expert of the European Commission. He leads the RESOCIAL Project and will lead VaROS (Vulnerability and Resilience in an Online Society), two interdisciplinary projects on social media vulnerability and resilience funded by the Dutch Research Agenda . His field of research and teaching is digital rights, digital vulnerability, digital wellbeing, data protection law, privacy, AI regulation, AI explainability rights, and consumer protection in the digital market. Gianclaudio has authored more than 100 publications, including the book "Vulnerability and Data Protection Law" (Oxford University Press, 2023) and articles in leading international academic journals, and he is the Co-Rapporteur for the American Law Institute - European Law Institute Principles on Biometrics. His works have been cited by, inter alia, top international newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, Politico, La Tribune, France Culture, ilSole24Ore, la Repubblica, il Corriere della Sera, Euractiv, the EU Observer) but also institutions, e.g. the European Commission and the Council of Europe, and the Advocate General of the EU Court of Justice.