Il Digital Services Act e la produzione di conoscenza: le specificità rispetto ai tradizionali regimi di trasparenza

This article examines the Digital Services Act as a regulatory model that goes beyond the traditional understanding of transparency as the mere disclosure of information. Its central claim is that the DSA regulates not only the communication of data to users, authorities or the public, but also the organizational, procedural and technical conditions through which digital platforms are required to produce legally relevant knowledge about their systems, their decisions and the systemic risks generated by their services. From this perspective, contemporary economic regulation can be understood as a law of the cognitive process of conduct: it does not merely prescribe outcomes or prohibitions but structures the ways in which regulated actors collect information, qualify it, make decisions, provide reasons, document their activity and submit it to review. After distinguishing the social-epistemic role of platforms from the regulatory knowledge required by the DSA, the article identifies the main differences between the EU digital services regime and traditional transparency obligations. Under the DSA, knowledge is not only transferred but produced; its object is not static but dynamic and systemic; its circulation is not bilateral but multi-layered and institutionalized; and the protected legal interest is not limited to individual selfdetermination but extends to the governability of collective risks arising from platform power. Particular attention is devoted to obligations concerning content moderation, statements of reasons, internal complaint-handling systems, systemic risk assessment and mitigation, independent audits, compliance functions and data access for researchers. The article also explores the distinction between voluntary knowledge, mandatory knowledge and non-compellable knowledge. On the one hand, Article 7 DSA protects voluntary own-initiative investigations carried out in good faith, preventing the spontaneous production of knowledge from automatically leading to the loss of liability exemptions. On the other hand, Article 10(2)(b) confines information orders to data already collected and under the provider’s control, thereby preventing public authorities from compelling the production of new knowledge. The DSA thus establishes an intermediate model: it encourages and organizes the cognitive capacity of platforms, without turning it into a general monitoring obligation or a delegated public investigative function. DSA transparency therefore emerges as an epistemic technique for governing digital power.