You have the right to complain if you believe platforms have violated your rights.
There are complaints mechanisms available depending on the nature of the violation of rights that you have faced.
Data protection
If you believe your personal data has been processed unlawfully and that your right to private life has been violated, you can complain to the Data Protection Inspectorate. This includes cases of gathering of your data without a legitimate ground or your consent, or failing to remove or rectify data and others.
example You asked a social media platform to remove a photo you are tagged in, but they refused to do so.
Read about how to complain regarding your data in this Guide.
Discrimination
You can complain to the Gender Equality and Equal Treatment Comissioner if you believe you have faced discrimination.
example A business posts a discriminatory job advertisement on social media that only seeks to hire men for a position as director of commerce.
Read about how to complain when you face discrimination in this Guide.
Complaints about the actions of platforms
You have the right to complain if a decision by a platform was made whether it was to:
- remove, disable access to, or the visibility, of information
example Your post on social media is not fully deleted but its visibility is restricted, and the algorithms of the social media website do not show the post to other users.
example You reported a post on social media that is full of hate speech but the social media platform did not take any action.
- suspend or terminate the provision of the service to you
exampleYou can no longer use the marketplace of a social media website to sell the household items you no longer need because of an alleged abuse of the system.
- suspend or terminate your account
example Your social media account is suspended for a month because of alleged abuse when posting on social media.
- suspend, terminate or restrict the ability to monetise information
example A social media platform suspends the monetisation of an influencer’s account because they did not follow the rules on tagging advertising.
Complaint mechanisms for actions of a platform
Read further to find out about the ways available to complain about the actions of a platform.
Providers of online platforms have an obligation to provide an internal complaint-handling system that allows you to lodge complaints, electronically and free of charge.
The specific procedures will be listed in the terms and conditions of the platform. You have 6 months to submit the complaint.
If you are not satisfied with the decision of the online platform, you can select any out-of-court dispute settlement body to resolve disputes.
Both users and online platforms must engage in good faith with the selected out-of-court-dispute settlement body with a view to resolving the dispute. The allocation of the fees depends on the outcome of the procedure. In any case, the dispute settlement will usually be available free of charge or at a nominal fee for the recipients of the service. Out-of-court dispute settlement bodies do not have the power to impose a binding settlement for the dispute on the parties.
You can find the list of such out-of-court dispute settlement bodies on the website of the European Commission.
In Estonia, the designated Digital Services Coordinator is the Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority. You can read about how to complain to the Authority on its website.
example You can complain to the Authority about failures related to the terms and conditions of service providers, breaches of protection of minors on the internet, issues relating to the transparent presentation of advertising on the internet and others.
note The Authority will not handle complaints regarding very large online platforms and search engines. These are handled by the European Commission.
The Digital Services Coordinator does not examine or decide whether specific content is lawful and should be removed. You must first inform the service provider on the service of which you have noticed potentially illegal content. You also have the possibility to file a complaint with the Estonian Press Council, which is a self-regulatory body for print and online.