European Commission asks Amazon to provide details on recommendation algorithms and ad transparency

London, July 5 The European Commission on Friday sent e-commerce giant Amazon a request for information (RFI) under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

It asked the Jeff Bezos-founded giant to provide additional information on the measures the platform has taken to comply with DSA obligations related to the transparency of recommendation systems and their parameters, as well as regulations on maintaining an ad repository and a risk assessment report.

Specifically, the tech giant was asked to provide details about its compliance with regulations “concerning the transparency of recommendation systems, the input factors, features, signals, information and metadata used in such systems, and the options offered to users to opt out of profiling in recommendation systems.”

The company must also provide more information about the design, development, implementation, testing, and maintenance of the Amazon Store Ad Library web interface, as well as supporting documents for the risk assessment report.

“Amazon must provide the requested information by 26 July 2024. Based on the assessment of the response, the Commission will assess the next steps. This may include formally initiating proceedings under section 66 of the DSA,” the Commission said. It also mentioned that it may impose fines for incorrect, incomplete or misleading information in response to an RFI under section 74(2) of the DSA.

In the absence of a response, the Commission may issue a formal request by way of a decision. “In such a case, failure to respond within the deadline may result in the imposition of periodic penalty payments,” it said.

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