Today, the Commission has sent Amazon a request for information (RFI) under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The Commission is requesting Amazon to provide more information on the measures the platform has taken to comply with the DSA obligations related to the transparency of recommender systems and their parameters, as well as to the provisions on maintaining an ad repository and its risk assessment report.

In particular, Amazon is asked to provide detailed information on its compliance with the provisions concerning transparency of the recommender systems, the input factors, features, signals, information and metadata applied for such systems and options offered to users to opt out of being profiled for the recommender systems. The company also has to provide more information on the design, development, deployment, testing and maintenance of the online interface of Amazon Store’s Ad Library and supporting documents regarding its risk assessment report.

Amazon must provide the requested information by 26 July 2024. Based on the assessment of the replies, the Commission will assess the next steps. This could entail the formal opening of proceedings pursuant to Article 66 of the DSA.

Pursuant to Article 74 (2) of the DSA, the Commission can impose fines for incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information in response to RFIs. In case of failure to reply, the Commission may issue a formal request by decision. In this case, failure to reply by the deadline could lead to the imposition of periodic penalty payments.

Following its designation as a Very Large Online Platform and the Court’s decision to reject Amazon’s request to suspend the obligation to make its advertisement repository publicly available, Amazon is required to comply with the full set of DSA obligations. This includes diligently identifying and assessing all systemic risks relevant to its service, providing an option in their recommender systems that is not based on user profiling, and have an advertisement repository publicly available.