European Commission calls Amazon to furnish details on recommender algorithms, ads transparency

Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
WASHINGTON , 7th July. European Commission on Saturday requested e-commerce giant Amazon for information under the Digital Services Act, according to a press release issued by the commission.

It has asked the Jeff Bezos-founder of Amazon to provide more information on the measures the platform has taken to comply with the DSA obligations related to the transparency of recommender systems and their parameters, as well as to the provisions on maintaining an ad repository and its risk assessment report.

The tech giant is asked to provide detailed information on its compliance with the provisions “concerning transparency of the recommender systems, the input factors, features, signals, information and metadata applied for such systems and options offered to users to opt out of being profiled for the recommender systems”.

The company has to provide more information on the design, development, deployment, testing and maintenance of the online interface of Amazon Store’s Ad Library and supporting documents regarding its risk assessment report.

“Amazon must provide the requested information by July 26, 2024. Based on the assessment of the replies, the Commission will assess the next steps. This could entail the formal opening of proceedings pursuant to Article 66 of the DSA,” the Commission said.

It mentioned that it can impose fines for incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information in response to RFIs under Article 74 (2) of the DSA.

The European Commission said that in case of failure to reply, it may issue a formal request by decision. “In this case, failure to reply by the deadline could lead to the imposition of periodic penalty payments,” it stated.