Algeria’s Audiovisual and Online Media Law: What the .dz Hosting Mandate Means for Content Creators, Streamers, and Digital Publishers

The New Legal Landscape for Digital Content in Algeria

In December 2023, Algeria enacted Law No. 23-20 on audiovisual activity, a sweeping overhaul that extends broadcast-era regulation into the digital sphere. The legislation requires all entities conducting “audiovisual activity” on Algerian territory to host their content on servers located within Algeria and to operate under a .dz domain name. Article 85 granted a 12-month transitional period, meaning full compliance became mandatory in December 2024. For traditional broadcasters, the mandate is straightforward. For the country’s rapidly growing ecosystem of YouTubers, Twitch streamers, podcasters, and digital-first publishers, the implications are anything but clear.

Algeria’s digital content landscape has expanded dramatically over the past five years. The country counts 36.2 million internet users as of early 2025, representing a 76.9% penetration rate, with YouTube and Facebook serving as primary content consumption platforms. Algerian creators like DZjoker (approximately 4 million YouTube subscribers), Anes Tina (over 5 million followers across platforms), Raouf Khelif (3.2 million YouTube subscribers), and a new wave of gaming streamers have built audiences that rival traditional media outlets. The Algerian podcast scene, though nascent, has seen rapid growth, with shows covering politics, tech, culture, and entrepreneurship gaining traction on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Two regulatory bodies oversee compliance. ARPCE (Autorité de Régulation de la Poste et des Communications Électroniques), Algeria’s telecommunications regulator, manages domain oversight and infrastructure compliance. The law also empowers the existing Audiovisual Regulatory Authority (ARAV), which is responsible for licensing and content oversight of audiovisual services. Together, these bodies will determine who falls under the law’s scope and how enforcement unfolds.

What Does “Audiovisual Activity” Actually Mean?

The law defines audiovisual activity broadly: any service that provides audiovisual content to the public by electronic means. This clearly encompasses television channels, video-on-demand platforms, and web-based broadcasting. But the language does not draw a bright line between professional media operations and individual content creators. A production company streaming documentaries on a dedicated platform unambiguously falls within scope. A university student uploading gaming highlights to YouTube occupies a legal gray zone that the implementing regulations have not yet resolved.

The .dz domain and local hosting requirements create immediate practical challenges. Algeria’s .dz domain registry, managed by CERIST (Centre de Recherche sur l’Information Scientifique et Technique), currently administers approximately 18,000 registered .dz domains, a small fraction of Algeria’s web presence. Registration requires Algerian residency or a registered business entity and costs 1,000 Algerian dinars per year. The local hosting market, led by Algérie Télécom alongside private players like ICOSNET (which operates data centers in Algiers and Oran) and DZSphere, offers limited capacity compared to hyperscale cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure, none of which operate data centers in Algeria.

For a digital publisher running a news site, migrating to .dz hosting is operationally feasible, if costly in terms of performance and scalability. For a YouTuber whose content lives entirely on Google’s infrastructure, the concept of “local hosting” breaks down entirely. YouTube does not offer .dz domain mapping. Twitch does not permit users to relocate their stream ingestion to Algerian servers. The law, as written, appears to impose obligations that are architecturally incompatible with how global platforms operate.

The Content Creator Dilemma: Compliance vs. Reality

Algeria’s content creator economy is not trivial. Since YouTube expanded its Partner Program to Algeria, thousands of Algerian creators now earn income through the platform, with top creators generating revenue in the range of $5,000 to $50,000 per month from advertising, sponsorships, and brand deals. The broader ecosystem includes freelance video editors, thumbnail designers, social media managers, and MCN (multi-channel network) affiliates, collectively forming a micro-industry that operates almost entirely on foreign platforms.

The law introduces a licensing regime that could formalize this economy or constrain it. Article 4 of Law 23-20 stipulates that audiovisual activities require prior authorization from the Minister of Communication, and limits operations to Algerian legal persons whose capital is held exclusively by Algerian natural persons or entities. If interpreted to cover independent creators, this would mean that starting a YouTube channel focused on Algerian content could require government approval. The implementing decrees, expected after the December 2024 transitional deadline but not yet fully published as of February 2026, are supposed to clarify thresholds and exemptions. Industry observers anticipate that a distinction will be drawn based on audience size, monetization, or content type, but until those decrees materialize, legal uncertainty persists.

The press law dimensions add another layer. Algeria’s Law No. 23-19 on the Written and Electronic Press, also enacted in December 2023, already requires online publications to register with authorities and broadens the definition of media publishing to cover anyone publishing news on any platform. The audiovisual law extends similar registration logic to video and audio content. For digital publishers operating hybrid formats, think a news site that publishes both articles and video reports, this creates overlapping regulatory obligations. A single outlet could simultaneously fall under the press law, the audiovisual law, and Algeria’s data protection framework (Law No. 18-07, updated by Law No. 11-25 in 2025), each administered by a different authority.

What Happens Next: Enforcement, Exemptions, and the Platform Question

The enforcement timeline remains the critical unknown. ARPCE has signaled a phased approach, prioritizing large commercial operations before turning to individual creators. The regulator’s current bandwidth is limited; it manages telecom licensing, spectrum allocation, and domain oversight with a staff optimized for infrastructure regulation, not content moderation at scale. Building the capacity to monitor thousands of digital creators would require significant institutional expansion.

International precedent offers some guidance. Turkey’s Law No. 7253, enacted in July 2020, amended the existing Internet Law No. 5651 to require foreign social media platforms with over one million daily users to appoint local representatives in Turkey. Platforms that refused faced escalating sanctions from fines to bandwidth throttling of up to 90%, though in practice all major platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok, complied before throttling was imposed. France’s audiovisual regulator ARCOM (created in 2022 from the merger of CSA and HADOPI) similarly extended its jurisdiction to online video platforms and social networks under EU directive transposition. Algeria’s approach echoes these models but goes further by mandating domain-level localization.

The platform question looms largest. If Algeria enforces .dz hosting strictly, platforms like YouTube and Twitch face a choice: build local infrastructure, partner with Algerian hosting providers, or risk having their services restricted. Given Algeria’s market size (approximately $270 million in digital advertising spend annually), the economic incentive for platform accommodation is modest compared to markets like Turkey (approximately $1.5 billion in digital advertising) or Saudi Arabia (over $2.5 billion). The more likely outcome is a pragmatic enforcement approach that targets domestic commercial operations while leaving individual creators on global platforms in a de facto tolerated gray zone.

Sources & Further Reading

• Law No. 23-20 on Audiovisual Activity — Digital Policy Alert
• DPA Digital Digest: Algeria 2025 Edition — Digital Policy Alert
• Algeria Digital Report 2025 — DataReportal
• ARPCE Official Portal — Autorité de Régulation
• CERIST .dz Domain Registry — NIC.dz
• Algeria: New Media Law Tightens Restrictions on Online Content — SMEX
• Algeria: Mitigate Human Rights Threats of New Media Laws — Article 19
• Turkey Social Media Regulation Analysis — Article 19
• ARCOM France — Online Platform Regulation
• ICOSNET Algeria — Hosting and Cloud Services
• Algeria Data Protection Law 18-07 — CookieYes Guide
• Algeria Press Law Framework — RSF