Does having a comments section qualify my services as a hosting service?
In short: Yes. Having a comments section on your platform qualifies your services, at minima, as a hosting serviceA hosting service enables individuals, companies and other service providers to host websites, databases, applications.
Within the meaning of the DSA, a hosting service offers the storage of user-generated content. This includes for example filesharing, social media, video-sharing platforms as well as marketplaces. More. More precisely, a hosting service in the meaning of the DSA is a service that stores user generated content (UGC). Perhaps owing to the fact that the definition is rather simple, it also encompasses a whole host of services, which are very different in type, size and business model. The category includes webhosting companies like AWS or GoDaddy, file storage and sharing like Dropbox, marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba, as well as social media services like Facebook. Because there are no exemptions based on size or type of the service, hosting services also include some services, which may come as a surprise, such as the comments sections of online newspapers and blogs as well as user reviews on e-commerce websites.
Does a comments section also qualify my services as an “online platform”?
Short answer: It depends.
Read the full version of the blog on Utopia.
