Few people know about it, but users can challenge the often arbitrary-looking decisions by digital platforms such as Facebook or YouTube, also in Hungary. We asked Gergely Gosztonyi, a member of the Online Platform Dispute Settlement Board, about the main takeaways from their almost 200 cases so far.

A few years ago, there were only two options available if a social media platform deleted someone’s account or restricted some of their content. They could complain to the platform itself or go to court.

Since the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) was adopted in 2022, there is a third possibility: the so-called out-of-court dispute settlement bodies. According to the European Commission’s list, there are currently 11 such bodies operating in the EU, among them the Online Platform Dispute Settlement Board (Online Platform Vitarendező Tanács, OPVT in Hungarian), which was officially certified in August 2024 by Hungary’s National Media and Infocommunications Authority, the body responsible for enforcing the DSA in the country.

Users can turn to dispute settlement bodies in two situations: if they believe that an online platform covered by the DSA, such as Facebook, YouTube or TikTok, has unfairly restricted their own account or some content they have posted; or if they have reported another user for violating the platform’s policies, but the platform has failed to take action.

These bodies cannot issue legally binding decisions in individual cases, but platforms are obliged to cooperate with them.

What does this cooperation look like in practice, based on the experience of two years and almost 200 Hungarian cases? Gergely Gosztonyi, a member of the OPVT and a university lecturer at ELTE Faculty of Law, discussed this on Lakmusz’s podcast. The conversation is also available (in Hungarian) on Lakmusz’s Spotify channel. Below is a short English summary of the interview.

They couldn’t care less

According to Gosztonyi, an alternative dispute resolution method, which had already been used in other areas of consumer protection, was needed in the digital sphere because neither internal appeals nor the courts were working properly.

“The service provider, I don’t know how else to put it, doesn’t give a damn about its users. Facebook has so many users that if one of them creates a fuss, nobody even notices. And going to court means lengthy proceedings; moreover, the court system isn’t equipped to deal with a legal dispute, the subject of which is that Facebook wouldn’t let me log into my account.”

Users still need to go through the platform’s own internal appeals system before they can turn to a dispute settlement body, but the dispute resolution procedure is considerably faster than going to court. The user receives a decision within a maximum of 180 days, and the OPVT’s procedure is currently free of charge; there used to be a fee of HUF 3,000, but even that was abolished.

Dispute settlement bodies can specify which online platforms they deal with, and what types of cases and languages they accept. The nine-member OPVT specialises in Hungarian-language content, but beyond that, users can bring complaints concerning any online platform and any type of content moderation issue. There are some large European dispute settlement bodies that also accept complaints in Hungarian, but Gosztonyi says they use AI to translate Hungarian-language content, which can lead to misunderstandings of local context or expressions belonging to slang.

In its roughly two years of operation, the OPVT has dealt with approximately 190 cases.

According to Gosztonyi, 85 per cent of the complaints were against Facebook, and the vast majority of the cases concerned account suspensions.

Of the OPVT’s cases so far, the one that has attracted the most publicity was brought by Pesti Srácok (a media outlet close to the former Orbán-government) over the removal of its YouTube channel. Gergely Gosztonyi says, however, that it is not typical for well-known organisations to turn to them. Apart from Pesti Srácok, OPVT has dealt with a few cases brought by politicians, but the overwhelming majority of complainants are private individuals. It does happen, though, that a platform restricts not their personal account but, for example, the page dedicated to their small business.

A serious recurring problem is that platforms – Facebook in particular – fail to properly explain why they have suspended a user’s account, even though the DSA requires them to provide a statement of reasons.

“A significant share of users don’t have a clue why their accounts have been suspended. They’re standing in the middle of a pitch-black forest and haven’t got the slightest idea what’s going on, because all the information they get from the platform is: I’ve suspended your account because you violated our Community Standards. Which standard they violated, where, when, and how – none of that is revealed in the explanation, which, for that reason, may not even deserve to be called an explanation.”

It is also common that platforms fail to provide a more detailed reasoning during the OPVT’s proceedings as well, meaning that the board has to rule against the platform for breaching its obligation to give reasons, even in cases where the user probably did violate some rules.

According to Gosztonyi, inadequate explanations may also stem from the fact that most content moderation decisions by platforms are now made by artificial intelligence.

“We’re talking about such a volume of content that it has already slipped out of the platforms’ own hands. They simply don’t know how to deal with it.”

Cooperation?

Of the 190 cases decisioned so far, the OPVT has made recommendations to the platforms in 130–140 cases.

The platforms responded positively in around 20 percent of cases; in the remaining 80 percent, they either did not respond at all or disagreed with the OPVT’s recommendation.

But even half of that 20 percent turned out to be “false positives” according to Gergely Gosztonyi – in other words, although the platform said it would implement the OPVT’s recommendation, it subsequently failed to do so.

Gosztonyi noted that cooperation with Meta is particularly difficult; he says his experiences with Google, and even with Elon Musk’s X, have been more positive. In his view, the best solution would be to amend the DSA so that dispute settlement bodies could issue binding decisions. But even without such a legislative amendment, stronger action by the European Commission could make a big difference.

“These dispute settlement bodies need the European Commission to stand behind them and say: listen, platform, if you don’t cooperate, we’ll throw the book at you with the DSA fines.”

The lawyer is generally dissatisfied with the way the Commission applies the DSA to very large online platforms.

“Fewer cases are being opened than could genuinely be pursued, and when action is taken, what usually happens is that the Commission announces in politically well-communicable videos that it has handed out the biggest fine in the world, and then two or three months later it accepts the platforms’ commitments, and everything carries on as before. It's questionable whether these decisions have any real deterrent effect.”

Yet Gosztonyi believes that despite Donald Trump and the American right labelled the DSA a censorship law, it has in fact put stronger consumer protection tools into users’ hands, and the out-of-court dispute settlement system is one manifestation of this.

“It’s sad that, finally, there seems to be a more sensible European regulation governing how the online sphere works, and then this orange-haired guy steals the narrative, in a complete misunderstanding.”

If applied more consistently, the DSA could, according to Gosztonyi, curb the excessive power of digital platforms.

“The positive thing is that the DSA is trying, at the European stage, to take action against platforms that have acquired a level of power over freedom of expression that would have been unimaginable in previous times in history.”

Gosztonyi hopes that, in the future, the system of out-of-court dispute settlement bodies will help ensure that platforms stop seeing complainants as users who can simply be brushed aside, and instead start taking their responsibilities seriously.

(Cover photo: András Tóth/Qubit)