On Tuesday, EU lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), two bills aimed squarely at reining in Big Tech.
“The two bills aim to address the societal and economic effects of the tech industry by setting clear standards for how they operate and provide services in the EU, in line with the EU’s fundamental rights and values,” the European Parliament announced. “The Digital Services Act was adopted with 539 votes in favor, 54 votes against, and 30 abstentions. The Digital Markets Act – with 588 in favor, 11 votes against, and 31 abstentions.”
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The Digital Services Act (DSA) sets clear obligations for digital service providers, such as social media or marketplaces, to tackle the spread of illegal content, online disinformation, and other societal risks, the EU says. It obligates technology platforms to enact new measures to counter illegal content online and to do so quickly, improve transparency with regards to content moderation and automated content recommendations while giving users the ability to challenge moderation decisions, and bans the use of misleading and targeted advertising such as the use of so-called “dark patterns.” And platform with 45 million or more monthly active users will have to adhere to even stricter regulations.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires large online platforms that act as “gatekeepers” to ensure a fairer business environment and offer more services for consumers. This includes requiring them to open up their services to third parties to give users more choice, and to allow business users to access their own data generated on the gatekeepers’ platforms. Most importantly, the DMA prevents platform makers from favoring their own services over those of rivals or partners, requires them to allow their customers to easily uninstall any preloaded software/apps and to use rival apps and app stores, and forgo using personal data for targeted ads unless consent is explicitly granted.
“To ensure that the new rules on the DMA are properly implemented and in line with the dynamic digital sector, the [European] Commission can carry out market investigations,” the announcement adds. “If a gatekeeper does not comply with the rules, the Commission can impose fines of up to 10 percent of its total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year, or up to 20 percent in case of repeated non-compliance.”
The new bills will be formally adopted by the European Council in July (DMA) and September (DSA), respectively, and both acts will be published in the EU Official Journal and enter into force twenty days after publication.
dftf
<p>If I were to hazard-a-guess, California will rush to do something similar; the State of New York will then follow… and pretty-much all of the other states will do nothing? Isn’t that usually the pattern?</p>
dftf
<p><em>Who decides what is disinformation?</em></p><p><br></p><p>In the EU, this will be the <em>EU Commission </em>and if challenged-legally, the <em>ECJ (European Court of Justice</em>), which is their equivalent of the <em>US Supreme Court</em>. In the US, this is currently largely decided by the senior-figures of each app themselves, with debates around whether <em>First Amendment</em> rights to free-speech apply when on a private app or not. (In most Western countries, it would essentially boil-down to their government, and then if legally-challenged, whatever their highest-court was to rule.)</p><p><br></p><p><em>How do you assure consumers have equal access to all competitors’ services?</em></p><p><br></p><p>This is one bit where I think it’s clearly the case the legislators may not understand how the technology actually works. The only example I can think of where you have had cross-cooperation in the past would be that time <em>MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger)</em> and <em>Yahoo! Messenger</em> allowed each-others’ users to chat to one-another… but that didn’t apply to the advanced-features, such as games, webcam or file-sharing, from what I can remember. Maybe <em>Apple</em> allowing <em>iTunes</em> and <em>iPod</em> to work on <em>Windows</em> (though clearly that was a business-decision); <em>Safari for Windows</em> perhaps? There really isn’t many examples to go-on…</p>
dftf
<p>The one thing I don’t get though is why the Anti-Trust rulings don’t seem to set precedents.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Microsoft</em> was found guilty of gaining an unfair-advantage in the browser-wars by bundling <em>Internet Explorer</em> with <em>Windows</em>… and yet today, they are okay to bundle <em>Edge; </em>and <em>Apple</em> seem to be okay to bundle <em>Safari</em> with <em>macOS</em> and <em>iOS/iPadOS</em> (where they also force the use of their browser-engine in all apps), and <em>Google</em> bundle <em>Chrome</em> on the vast-majority of <em>Android</em> phones.</p><p><br></p><p>So, if the ruling is "don’t bundle your own browser within your own OS", why doesn’t this still apply?</p>
dftf
<p><em>"There is nothing wrong with capitalism provided the market is competitive"</em></p><p><br></p><p>And while we’re at-it, can we add "…and also allow companies to fail"? I thought the whole-thing about capitalism is that people take a risk, and if it pays-off they reap the rewards; but if things fail, they fail. We seem to ignore that last-part nowadays, and endlessly bail-out failing companies.</p><p><br></p><p>On a similar-note, it’s also ridiculous how when companies do fail, and liquidate themselves, none of the debts chased get repaid… but the same executive people involved are free to open another company, doing the <em>exact same thing,</em> often with a similar-name (and in some cases, also in <em>the exact same premises</em>), but the debts somehow don’t follow-them? Maybe tie debts to <em>people</em>, not <em>companies</em>?</p>
dftf
<p>While I wouldn’t use as-strong words as yourself, it is somewhat ironic that the US is going-after <em>TikTok</em> for sharing user-data with the Chinese government — when it’s obvious to most people that US agencies like the <em>NSA</em> and <em>FBI</em> will likely be doing the same with US-owned apps and websites.</p><p><br></p><p>And it wasn’t all that long-ago there were all the news stories on how the <em>Facebook</em> app preinstalled on many phones would collect data from that phone <em>even if the user had never opened it</em>! Even-today, the app version asks for permission to read your list of contacts, and then shares all that information back to <em>Facebook</em>, meaning they are collecting names, phone-numbers, home addresses and e-mail addresses from people who may not have consented to them having them!</p>