The Alibaba-owned e-commerce site AliExpress is under an official investigation by the European Commission (EC) following potential infringements of the Digital Services Act (DSA), as announced by European authorities on Thursday.
The focus of the investigation is on the possible violations of the DSA mandates by AliExpress in “areas related to risk management and reduction, content moderation and internal complaint review mechanism, transparency of advertising and recommendation systems, monitoring seller actions, and data access for researchers“, as indicated in the EC’s statement.
Particularly, the EC will assess whether AliExpress failed to comply with its own terms of service that prohibit the offer of certain products that pose a risk to consumer health, including counterfeit medications. Additionally, any violations of the DSA that may have allowed minors to access pornographic materials, still allegedly hosted on the platform, will be investigated.
Besides, inquiries will be made into how AliExpress recommends products to its users and whether the platform adheres to the rule allowing the search of a repository of its listed advertisements.
This is the EC’s third investigation into DSA compliance, following similar ones on TikTok and social media platform X earlier.
