The new Digital Services Act (“DSA”) of the European Union (“EU”), which entered into force on 16 November 2022, imposes new obligations on digital service providers, including Rakuten Viber.
Under Article 24 (2) of the DSA, we are required to publish ‘information on the average monthly active recipients of the service’ in the EU over the period of the past six months. This is to determine whether an online platform falls under the definition of a ‘very large online platform’ (“VLOP”), meaning that it reaches an average of at least 45 million users per month in the EU.
We have calculated the average monthly active users of our service in the EU between 1 July 2022 to 31 December 2022 in accordance with Recital 77 of the DSA and “Guidance on the requirement to publish user numbers” provided by the European Commission. We have concluded that the average number of monthly active recipients of our service in the EU falls under 45 million users.
We will continue to monitor the number of average monthly active recipients of our service in the EU, and, as required, will publish updated information later in 2023.