What can EU platform regulation do, and what does the case of women politicians reveal?
By Ana Isabel Rodrigues Oliveira
KEY INSIGHTS
- The Digital Services Act does not define or criminalise online gender-based harassment. Its contribution lies in regulating the platform conditions through which harassment is reported, moderated, amplified or mitigated.
- The DSA’s procedural tools, especially notice-and-action, complaint-handling systems, out-of-court dispute settlement and trusted flaggers, strengthen user protection but work best where harmful conduct can be classified as illegal content.
- Online gender-based harassment often operates cumulatively. A single post may be lawful or ambiguous, while repeated gendered attacks may create intimidation, silence and exclusion.
- Articles 34 and 35 are important because they allow regulators to examine whether platform design, recommender systems, moderation practices or coordinated behaviour contribute to broader risks affecting fundamental rights, civic discourse and gender-based violence.
- The case of women politicians shows that online gender-based harassment is not only a matter of individual dignity or safety. It can also affect democratic participation and representation.
Introduction
Online platforms have become central spaces for political communication, civic mobilisation and public debate. They allow citizens, activists and political actors to speak directly to large audiences. Yet the same platforms that create visibility also make harassment easier to organise, amplify and repeat.
This matters especially where online abuse targets people because of gender, public role or political visibility. Online gender-based harassment is not only a question of individual misconduct. It is also a question of platform governance. Harmful content can be shared quickly, reproduced across platforms and made more visible by systems designed to reward engagement.
This article asks what the Digital Services Act (DSA) can do against online gender-based harassment. The answer is necessarily limited but important. The DSA does not create a specific offence of online gender-based harassment. It does not replace criminal law, anti-discrimination law or victim-support frameworks. Instead, it regulates the responsibilities of intermediary services and online platforms.
The case of women politicians helps show why this matters. Women in politics are not the only targets of gendered online abuse, but their experience reveals the democratic stakes of the problem. When gendered harassment pushes women away from public debate, the harm is not only personal. It can also narrow political participation and weaken democratic representation.
1. The DSA as Platform Regulation
The Digital Services Act, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, was adopted to create common rules for intermediary services in the European Union. Formally, it is an internal market instrument. Its purpose is to avoid fragmentation between Member States and create a harmonised framework for digital services.
However, the DSA is not only about market integration. Article 1 frames the Regulation around the creation of a safe, predictable and trustworthy online environment, while protecting fundamental rights. This dual purpose is essential. The DSA regulates digital services because platforms are not neutral spaces: their design choices, moderation systems and algorithms shape how people speak, organize and participate online.
This is particularly relevant for online gender-based harassment because the harm is often not limited to one unlawful post. It may arise from repetition, coordinated targeting, inadequate reporting systems or platform practices that allow abusive content to spread and remain visible. A framework focused only on isolated illegal posts risks missing the broader conditions that make online harassment socially and politically damaging.
Recital 40 reinforces this point by recognizing that some users may be particularly exposed to hate speech, sexual harassment and discriminatory conduct. This does not turn the DSA into a gender-based violence instrument, but it supports a contextual reading of platform duties where certain groups face heightened risks online.
The DSA also sits within a broader EU legal framework. The Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence criminalizes certain forms of cyberviolence, including cyberstalking, cyber harassment and the non-consensual sharing of intimate or manipulated material. The GDPR may also become relevant where online harassment involves the processing or misuse of personal data, while the AI Act is relevant where synthetic or manipulated content is used to harm individuals. The DSA serves a distinct regulatory function. Rather than criminalizing the underlying harmful conduct, it establishes obligations for online platforms and addresses the conditions through which such harmful content can be disseminated, reported and addressed (Jóźwiak & Ohnesorge, 2026).
2. The Limits of Illegal Content
Article 3(h) DSA defines “illegal content” as information that is not in compliance with Union law or with the law of a Member State compatible with Union law. This definition matters because several DSA mechanisms depend on identifying illegal content.
This creates an important limitation. Online gender-based harassment does not always appear in forms that are clearly unlawful. It may involve humiliation, sexist insults, reputational attacks, coordinated hostility or repeated messages intended to silence a person. Some of this conduct may be illegal. Some may violate platform rules. Some may remain lawful but harmful.
The European Parliamentary Research Service identifies cyberharassment, cyberstalking, threats, image-based abuse and misogynistic hate speech among the forms of cyberviolence affecting women in the EU (Zamfir & Murphy, 2024). Some of these practices clearly cross legal thresholds, while others are more difficult to classify, especially where the harm comes from accumulation rather than from a single identifiable act. This constitutes a central legal difficulty. A single message may look merely offensive; however, a sustained pattern of similar messages may create intimidation. The illegality of each individual act may be uncertain, while the collective effect is clear. Online gender-based harassment often operates in this grey area.
3. What the DSA Can Do Procedurally
The DSA gives users several tools to report and challenge harmful content moderation decisions.
Article 16 requires hosting service providers to create notice-and-action mechanisms. These allow individuals or entities to notify content they consider illegal. For victims of online gender-based harassment, this can be useful in cases involving threats, doxing, image-based abuse or illegal hate speech. However, Article 16 remains reactive. It depends on the user identifying specific content and explaining why it is illegal. This is useful for individual posts, but less effective when abuse is repetitive, coded or coordinated.
Articles 20 and 21 add further procedural safeguards. Article 20 requires online platforms to provide internal complaint-handling systems. Article 21 allows access to certified out-of-court dispute settlement bodies. These mechanisms make platform decisions more contestable and reduce the opacity of private content governance.
Article 22 introduces trusted flaggers. These are independent entities with expertise in identifying illegal content, whose notices must be treated with priority. This can help where specialized knowledge is needed, especially in cases involving gender-based violence, image-based abuse or coordinated harassment.
The protective capacity of these mechanisms remains subject to important limitations. They are most effective where the content concerned can be clearly classified as illegal. They are less effective where harm arises from patterns of conduct (repeated attacks, public humiliation, reputational damage or gradual withdrawal from public debate). Procedural safeguards matters, but procedure mechanisms alone do not always provide timely or effective protection.
4. Articles 34 and 35: Risk-Based Platform Governance
Articles 34 and 35 are central because they move the DSA beyond individual content removal.
Article 34 requires very large online platforms and very large online search engines to identify and assess systemic risks arising from the design, functioning or use of their services, including algorithmic systems. These risks include illegal content, negative effects on fundamental rights, civic discourse, electoral processes, gender-based violence and physical and mental well-being.
Article 35 then requires platforms to adopt reasonable, proportionate and effective mitigation measures. These may include changes to platform design, terms and conditions, moderation systems, recommender systems, advertising systems and cooperation with trusted flaggers.
This matters for online gender-based harassment because the harm is often cumulative and contextual. The issue is not only whether a platform removes illegal posts. The issue is whether its systems help make harassment more visible, persistent or coordinated.
Jóźwiak and Ohnesorge describe this as an anticipatory model of platform governance. Unlike remedial tools, which respond after harm appears, Articles 34 and 35 require platforms to identify foreseeable risks and mitigate them before harm fully materialises (Jóźwiak & Ohnesorge, 2026).
However, this framework also raises problems. The meaning of “systemic risk” remains open-ended. Sullivan and Pielemeier argue that a risk may be systemic because it affects broader systems, such as democracy or fundamental rights, or because it is caused or amplified by platform systems, such as recommender algorithms or moderation failures (Sullivan & Pielemeier, 2023).
Online gender-based harassment may fit both understandings. It may affect democratic participation by discouraging women from public life. It may also be amplified by platform systems that reward outrage and visibility. Identifying this connection is difficult.
Articles 34 and 35 should therefore not be overstated. Their value lies in broadening the regulatory lens beyond individual instances and unlawful content. They enable regulators to assess whether platforms are taking adequate measures to mitigate risks (that may allow online harassment) to be amplified, normalized, or democratically exclusionary.
5. Women Politicians and Democratic Harm
The case of women politicians shows why online gender-based harassment cannot be assessed only through the legality of individual posts. Women politicians face hostility not only as public figures, but often as women whose presence in politics is challenged through gendered abuse.
The European Parliamentary Research Service notes that female politicians, journalists and human rights defenders are particularly exposed to cyberviolence because online attacks can be anonymous, scalable and aimed at silencing the target (Zamfir & Murphy, 2024). GREVIO similarly stresses that digital violence against women can silence women’s voices and reduce their participation in public debate, especially where the targets are women in politics, journalism or human rights advocacy (GREVIO, 2021).
Recent empirical research makes this point more precise. Jarman analysed more than three million social media mentions directed at state legislators in the United States. She found that women politicians do not necessarily receive higher overall volumes of hostility than men. The difference lies in the content. Visible women politicians receive substantially more gender-specific abuse (Jarman, 2026).
This matters for platform regulation. If regulators look only at the number of hostile messages, they may miss the gendered nature of the harm. The problem is not only that women politicians are criticized harshly. Political criticism is part of democratic life. The problem is that gendered abuse can frame women’s political participation itself as improper or illegitimate.
This is where the DSA becomes relevant. Some abusive content may be illegal. Some may violate platform terms. Some may remain lawful. Yet the democratic harm may lie in the pattern: repeated gendered attacks, coordinated hostility, public humiliation and the gradual narrowing of women’s willingness to speak or remain visible online.
The DSA cannot solve this problem alone. It cannot replace criminal law, gender equality policy or victim-support services. But it can make platforms more accountable for the environments they design and the risks they amplify.
Conclusion
The Digital Services Act offers a limited but important response to online gender-based harassment. It does not define or criminalize this form of abuse, nor does it replace criminal law, gender equality policy or victim-support mechanisms. Its contribution lies elsewhere: it makes platforms more accountable for the systems through which harmful content is reported, moderated, amplified and mitigated.
The DSA’s procedural mechanisms are useful, especially where abusive conduct can be clearly classified as illegal content. Notice-and-action systems, complaint-handling mechanisms, out-of-court dispute settlement and trusted flaggers give users more tools to challenge harmful content and platform decisions. However, these mechanisms remain less effective where harassment is cumulative, for example.
This is why Articles 34 and 35 matter. They allow regulators to look beyond individual posts and ask whether platform design, recommender systems, moderation practices or coordinated behaviour contribute to broader risks. Online gender-based harassment often works precisely in this way: not through one isolated act, but through repetition, visibility and accumulation.
The case of women politicians shows the democratic importance of this issue. Gendered abuse can affect individual dignity and safety, but it can also discourage women from speaking, campaigning or remaining visible in public life. When online harassment narrows political participation, the harm is not only personal – It becomes democratic.
The DSA is therefore not a complete solution to online gender-based harassment. However, it provides a valuable legal framework for addressing the platform conditions that allow such harassment to spread and persist. Its effectiveness will depend on enforcement, transparency and the willingness of regulators to recognize and address the cumulative and gendered nature of these harms seriously, as well as on how the relevant provisions are interpreted and applied in practice.
CITE THIS BRIEF
Oliveira, A. I. R. (2026). The Digital Services Act and online gender-based harassment. EPIS Insight · European Law & International Institutions.
References
GREVIO. (2021). General Recommendation No. 1 on the digital dimension of violence against women. Council of Europe. https://rm.coe.int/grevio-rec-no-on-digital-violence-against-women/1680a49147
Jarman, A. (2026). Clicks and stones: Women politicians and gendered hostility online. British Journal of Political Science, 56, e29. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123426101458
Jóźwiak, M., & Ohnesorge, J. (2026). Platform governance and technology-facilitated gender-based violence: Positioning the DSA in the EU’s legal framework. DSA Observatory. https://dsa-observatory.eu/2026/07/13/platform-governance-and-technology-facilitated-gender-based-violence-positioning-the-dsa-in-the-eus-legal-framework/
Sullivan, D., & Pielemeier, J. (2023). Unpacking “systemic risk” under the EU’s Digital Services Act. Tech Policy Press. https://www.techpolicy.press/unpacking-systemic-risk-under-the-eus-digital-service-act/
Zamfir, I., & Murphy, C. (2024). Cyberviolence against women in the EU. European Parliamentary Research Service. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BRI(2024)767146
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