Social media complaints center decides against Facebook in the majority of cases

The new Appeals Center Europe (ACE), which has been acting as an arbitration body in the EU since November 2024 in disputes over content on social media platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA), has taken stock of its activities to date. During its first three months, the Complaints Center has received over 1,500 complaints from EU citizens about decisions made by Facebook, TikTok and YouTube and has issued a decision on over 150 of them.

In more than half of these arbitration rulings on content on Facebook – 77 out of 141 –, the ACE experts sided with the users and overturned the original decision of the parent company Meta to maintain or delete posts. Last week, the center said it had issued its first arbitration rulings on content on TikTok. A first ruling on YouTube is also due shortly.

According to the DSA, the decisions of out-of-court arbitration bodies such as ACE are not binding. However, platform operators must deal "in good faith" with the proceedings initiated and the results. "Meta has already begun implementing our decisions and we will publish further information on this in our first transparency report, which will be published in the middle of the year," says ACE.

The arbitration board is currently only dealing with submissions regarding Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Comparable services such as X, Mastodon or Bluesky are being left out for the time being. To date, 76 percent of all complaints have concerned Facebook, 21 percent TikTok and 3 percent YouTube. They included content in 47 languages and came from every single EU country. Most of the submissions came from Italy, followed by France and Germany.

In terms of content, the main focus was on possible violations of the platform rules on adult nudity and pornography. This was followed by bullying and harassment as well as restrictions on goods and services. With regard to the latter, there was controversy over whether and how users were allowed to mention items such as drugs and alcohol.

230 submissions from German users

The ACE has received 230 complaints from Germany so far. The three most important areas were nudity (24 percent), restricted goods and services (15 percent) and hate speech (10 percent). In general, the proportion of arbitration awards in which the ACE did not conform to the Meta line was significantly higher than 50 percent in some of these categories. For example, the examiners overturned 67 percent of Facebook cases relating to restricted goods and services and 59 percent of decisions on nudity and sexual activity by adults on the platform.

The complaints center is not yet satisfied with the reactions of the three social networks. The number of submissions indicates "a genuine interest" on the part of members in challenging the platforms' decisions. However, they still have "a long way to go to make out-of-court dispute resolution available to users, as required by law".

"Europe's best-kept secret"

In order to make faster decisions and help more members, operators need to respond to cases "quickly and seamlessly", explains ACE CEO Thomas Hughes. Furthermore, while the DSA has created a new right for people to challenge the decisions of platforms, it has made the claim "the best-kept secret in Europe". Ways to resolve disputes out of court must be "easily accessible, clear and user-friendly". Facebook & Co. are obliged to make their own website available for this purpose and to link to this and to an EU Commission portal on arbitration centers in their decisions. The German-based company User Rights, which has been certified by the Federal Network Agency, is also registered there.

ACE is mainly financed by fees charged to the social media companies for each case (95 euros). The complaints center has not yet asked users to pay. If the arbitration board decides in favor of the platform, users will have to pay 5 euros towards the costs in future. The social media operator would then still have to pay 90 euros. The initial funding for the ACE was provided by the Facebook Oversight Board. This is a self-regulatory body of Meta, which Hughes headed for a time.

(vbr)