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On 5 July 2024, the District Court of Amsterdam (Rechtbank Amsterdam) declared that Twitter International Unlimited Company – the Irish subsidiary of X – violated Articles 12 and 17 of the Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to designate a single point of contact for recipients of its services and silently hiding its user’s account from search suggestions (the practice also known as ‘shadowbanning’). The proceedings were initiated by the Dutch entrepreneur and PhD student Danny Mekić, who has a paid X Premium subscription. In October 2023, he made a post criticising...

On 25 June 2024, an important new mechanism came into effect, allowing journalists to shield personal data contained in the main public registry in the Netherlands from disclosure, where there is a “serious threat” to a journalist. This new mechanism is contained in an Agreement between the Dutch Association of Journalists (Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten) (NVJ) and the public administrative body that operates the public registry of land, including addresses (Dienst voor het Kadaster). The Agreement follows the announcement by the State Secretary for Culture and Media (Staatssecretaris...

On 12 June 2024, the National Council of Austria adopted a federal law amending the Data Protection Act. The new rules, which entered into force on 1 July 2024, aim to reorganise and differentiate the so-called media privilege in data protection. The revision became necessary following a decision by the Constitutional Court (VfGH), which ruled that a previous ruling – the blanket exemption for the media on the basis of Article 85 of the GDPR – was unconstitutional. According to the VfGH, data processing for journalistic purposes should not be exempted from the provisions of...

On 31 May, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) issued a precautionary measure preventing Meta from implementing two electoral features it had planned to launch in the context of the European Parliament elections: Election Day Information (EDI) and Voter Information Unit (VIU). These functionalities would consist of providing information to Facebook and Instagram users about the European Union elections, based on the processing of their personal data (username, IP address, age, gender, and other information). The precautionary suspension is valid for a maximum period of three months. The...

On 4 June 2024, the Spanish Council of Ministers approved the Anteproyecto de la Ley Orgánica de Protección de los Menores en los Entornos Digitales (draft Organic Law on the Protection of Minors in Digital Environments). According to Félix Bolaños, Minister for the Presidency, Parliamentary Relations and Democratic Memory, the law aims to guarantee the rights of minors, in particular the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 18 and 20 of the Spanish Constitution, i.e. the right to honour, personal and family privacy and one’s own image. The law begins...