EU Takes Aim at Big Tech's Power With Landmark Digital Act (theverge.com) 89
The European Union agreed on Thursday to one of the world's most far-reaching laws to address the power of the biggest tech companies (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), potentially reshaping app stores, online advertising, e-commerce, messaging services and other everyday digital tools. The New York Times reports: The law, called the Digital Markets Act, is the most sweeping piece of digital policy since the bloc put the world's toughest rules to protect people's online data into effect in 2018. The legislation is aimed at stopping the largest tech platforms from using their interlocking services and considerable resources to box in users and squash emerging rivals, creating room for new entrants and fostering more competition. [...] The Digital Markets Act will apply to so-called gatekeeper platforms, which are defined by factors including a market value of more than 75 billion euros, or about $83 billion. The group includes Alphabet, the owner of Google and YouTube; Amazon; Apple; Microsoft; and Meta. Specifics of the law read like a wish list for rivals of the biggest companies. Apple and Google, which make the operating systems that run on nearly every smartphone, would be required to loosen their grip. Apple will have to allow alternatives to its App Store for downloading apps, a change the company has warned could harm security. The law will also let companies such as Spotify and Epic Games use payment methods other than Apple's in the App Store, which charges a 30 percent commission.
Amazon will be barred from using data collected from outside sellers on its services so that it could offer competing products, a practice that is the subject of a separate E.U. antitrust investigation. The law will result in major changes for messaging apps. WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, could be required to offer a way for users of rival services like Signal or Telegram to send and receive messages to somebody using WhatsApp. Those rival services would have the option to make their products interoperable with WhatsApp. The largest sellers of online advertising, Meta and Google, will see new limits for offering targeted ads without consent. Such ads -- based on data collected from people as they move between YouTube and Google Search, or Instagram and Facebook -- are immensely lucrative for both companies.
[...] With these actions, Europe is cementing its leadership as the most assertive regulator of tech companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft. European standards are often adopted worldwide, and the latest legislation further raises the bar by potentially bringing the companies under new era of oversight -- just like health care, transportation and banking industries. "Faced with big online platforms behaving like they were 'too big to care,' Europe has put its foot down," said Thierry Breton, one of the top digital officials in the European Commission. "We are putting an end to the so-called Wild West dominating our information space. A new framework that can become a reference for democracies worldwide." On Thursday, representatives from the European Parliament and European Council hammered out the last specifics of the law in Brussels. The agreement followed about 16 months of talks -- a speedy pace for the E.U. bureaucracy -- and sets the stage for a final vote in Parliament and among representatives from the 27 countries in the union. That approval is viewed as a formality.
Amazon will be barred from using data collected from outside sellers on its services so that it could offer competing products, a practice that is the subject of a separate E.U. antitrust investigation. The law will result in major changes for messaging apps. WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, could be required to offer a way for users of rival services like Signal or Telegram to send and receive messages to somebody using WhatsApp. Those rival services would have the option to make their products interoperable with WhatsApp. The largest sellers of online advertising, Meta and Google, will see new limits for offering targeted ads without consent. Such ads -- based on data collected from people as they move between YouTube and Google Search, or Instagram and Facebook -- are immensely lucrative for both companies.
[...] With these actions, Europe is cementing its leadership as the most assertive regulator of tech companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft. European standards are often adopted worldwide, and the latest legislation further raises the bar by potentially bringing the companies under new era of oversight -- just like health care, transportation and banking industries. "Faced with big online platforms behaving like they were 'too big to care,' Europe has put its foot down," said Thierry Breton, one of the top digital officials in the European Commission. "We are putting an end to the so-called Wild West dominating our information space. A new framework that can become a reference for democracies worldwide." On Thursday, representatives from the European Parliament and European Council hammered out the last specifics of the law in Brussels. The agreement followed about 16 months of talks -- a speedy pace for the E.U. bureaucracy -- and sets the stage for a final vote in Parliament and among representatives from the 27 countries in the union. That approval is viewed as a formality.
Punished for being too successful (Score:1)
The Digital Markets Act will apply to so-called gatekeeper platforms, which are defined by factors including a market value of more than 75 billion euros, or about $83 billion.
I've said it before: There's no way to have a traditional monopoly on the internet (since internet "real estate" is boundless), so any anti-trust action against FAANG would basically amount to punishing companies for being too successful. Those crazy Europeans, they went and did it anyway. It seems less like they did this to address any genuine problems, and more out animosity towards the fact that the biggest tech companies happen to be headquartered in the USA.
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Very naïve remark. There clearly are monopolies on the internet. They actively suppress competition, they "box in users and squash emerging rivals", they collect a gigantic amount of data. They spend a huge amount of money lobbying against restrictions on their monopolistic activities. They also buy very aggressive legal challenges against efforts to combat their attempts to do ever more intensive monopolization.
Europeans are rightfully concerned about it and are willing to do something. The USA should
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Except for the pesky fact that they don't have a monopoly. TFS even states "Specifics of the law read like a wish list for rivals of the biggest companies." (emphasis mine)
It's not a monopoly simply because you have a grievance that you're competing with bigger established players in their respective markets. That's just fundamental to capitalism. The tech industry is not a special circumstance that requires greater regulation than any other sort of industry where you have the potential to experience mar
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You are trying to redefine words to argue against the substance.
Because you have no substantive argument. When someone has a massive market share and uses this market share to, for example, gain additional competitive advantage as amazon does with data collection on its competitors, that's clear cut abuse of a monopolist position.
And your only argument is that because amazon isn't a perfect and total monopoly in the market because hypothetically market is infinite because it's on the internet... there's no
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The point is that every large multi-national business behaves in the same manner. The tech industry is being unfairly singled out, and in this case it happens to be the American tech industry. This law is nothing more than EU protectionism.
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> There's no way to have a traditional monopoly on the internet
True, but the network effect is strong there.
Its like laying railway tracks, where every competitor has a different gauge. Trains from A can't trade with trains from B, creating localized trade silos.
If there was a possibility to keep it as INTERnet, instead of facebooknet the story would be different. (for communication between parties)
Another example: when you call using your cellphone, can you dial all numbers, regardless of your peer's o
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The tech industry is being unfairly singled out, and in this case it happens to be the American tech industry.
Actually, it's the opposite. This kind of anti-trust effort was applied broadly all around, including in the US, until the 1960's, and it made for a very vibrant, ultra-competitive market, witness e.g. how much wealthier baby boomers were compared to the current generation. Then in the 1970's a new vision began to took hold, influenced by Libertarian thinkers and others, according which monopolies were good, and so the agencies responsible to apply the already existing laws mostly stopped, narrowing their d
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The big change in the US that I recall was in the 80s when the Reagan administr
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Which actually makes sense, because smaller businesses don't benefit from the same economies of scale as a bigger company. In an industry where the products are given away for "free", on an advertisement and/or data monetized basis, increased competition isn't necessarily going to produce a result that is more favorable to consumers.
You see a perfect example of this every time you encounter a news website that presents you with a choice of disabling your Adblock or purchasing a subscription. There’s
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In competition law, a monopoly is usually defined as greater than 25% market share. Its not exclusivity. Its the point at which you can do (for instance) linked sales. You use your position in one segment to force or incline customers to buy associated products from you in a different segment.
Its the point at which various anti-competitive tactics which take advantage of your market share in one product or segment become effective, because the share is large enough to give you the power to use it to infl
Irony (Score:1)
the world's most far-reaching laws to address the power of the biggest tech companies (Warning: source may be paywalled)
Is it just me that sees the incredible irony there?
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The irony is that we've become accustomed to free shit on the internet because it has been paid for by ads and/or data monetization. It's like that (probably horribly misattributed and historically inaccurate) Indian anecdote where "only the white man would be foolish enough to believe he could improve on the existing system."
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You are right on so many levels. The Internet is an idea, and it's impossible to have a traditional monopoly on an idea. The Internet is also an electronic network, and it's impossible to have a traditional monopoly on electrons or photons because they are everywhere. There's also no way to have a traditional monopoly on "the Internet", because any two people or organizations can create an Internet by connecting two networks together, so by defin
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People who see the harm caused by companies who become too powerful are trying to do what they can to protect society from that.
Except, they're not protecting society from the harm caused by companies that have become too powerful - they've singled out the American tech industry. As I've already written, the tech industry is one of the few arenas where upstarts still have equal footing to go against an established player. If you can build a better Facebook or Amazon, your potential customers simply have to type in your domain name and they've arrived at your virtual doorstep. It's also still relatively inexpensive to establish a
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It seems like you're arguing that government should not do anything here, or that their motivation should be in question, because they failed to act appropriately earlier for similar issues.
But the government is not an eternal entity -- it's made of people and it changes every year. Those people may have different knowledge, skills, priorities, values, and ethics than their predecessors. Some of them want to serve their country and their people, some of them are corrupt and have different interests. And th
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I just didn't know that if the United States didn't maintain 70,000 troops in Germany, European markets might be closed to American goods and services.
Of course. If Putin gobbles up countries, say Germany. Where do you think they will by their gas from? Where will they by their military supplies?
You really didn't know this?
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There's a much better article here: https://www.consilium.europa.e... [europa.eu]
Among many great ideas, this one stood out:
ensure the interoperability of their instant messaging servicesâ(TM) basic functionalities
That could be a game changer. Apple would have to open up iMessage, Facebook would have to open up WhatsApp. Unfortunately I don't think Signal is big enough to be covered.
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ensure the interoperability of their instant messaging servicesÃ(TM) basic functionalities
That could be a game changer
Indeed it could - badly. Interconnecting two messaging networks with different security policies creates exciting opportunities for data leakage and hacking that only an espionage agency or phishing farm could love. How do you implement E2E between two completely different clients that can't share any code or secrets because they belong to different companies? Do you even bother to try, or do you automatically degrade any mandated interoperability communications to unencrypted and to hell with it? You can b
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For example, WhatsApp uses the Signal messaging protocol for end to end encryption. Signal is open source, the only thing stopping other clients interoperating with WhatsApp is that WhatsApp doesn't allow other clients to connect to its servers that coordinate everything.
All WhatsApp needs to do here is to allow other clients using the Signal protocol to connect to its servers.
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All WhatsApp needs to do here is to allow other clients using the Signal protocol to connect to its servers.
What if provider A has a 30 day retention policy and provider B has a 1 year retention policy? What if client A allows a message/picture to be deleted for both parties, and client B only allows a message/picture to be deleted locally? What if client A supports expiring messages and client B doesn't? Etc, etc. Duct taping together two systems that weren't designed with a common core functionality is a guaranteed fast track to endless edge cases. It is definitely not as simple as "here's our API document, God
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Signal is end-to-end encrypted so any retention policy will only be able to keep track of when the app was connected to the server, which for most people will be 24/365 because they never turn off their phone, and metadata such as times when messages were sent.
The actual message content cannot be logged, because it is end-to-end encrypted.
Note that the specific wording is only "basic functionality", so advanced features like deleting posts need not be supported. In any case, such features only serve to give
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You have to remember that the EU doesn't work like laws seem to in the US, where the precise wording is all that matters. In the EU, intent matters too.
If they do the bare minimum to technically comply, they will likely get a warning and then a fine if they try to subvert the intent of the rule.
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If they do the bare minimum to technically comply, they will likely get a warning and then a fine if they try to subvert the intent of the rule.
As I work in the software industry in the USA on products that cross borders - I do have some inkling :) However this is, like many such things, horribly difficult to define. Does "interoperability" mean "first class citizen interoperability"? Does that extend to requiring say Facebook to add support for features that a different vendor has? Does it require Facebook to open up APIs for _every feature_ of Messenger, e.g. payments, games, whatever other bloatware lives in Messenger these days? Or is someone,
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I don't think it would need that clear a definition, they would just look at the effect of whatever decisions they made. If they are distorting the marking by making the experience unnecessarily crappy, they won't be looked on favourably.
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It will then eg. show messages sent by its official client in green [slashdot.org] and teach users that green means better.
It will also add "value added" stupid features that work only with the official client.
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That is unlikely to fly in the EU, it would be considered subversion of the rule and possibly monopolistic behaviour. It's not like the US where slight flaws in the wording of a law are loopholes that can be exploited without consequence. In fact in the EU laws are often written to avoid too many specifics and set out the basic principals, which courts then use to decide the specifics, with account taken of the intent.
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I'm betting Apple will count on this.
"iMessage is compatible with other chat networks. But to stay 100% safe, make sure you rely on iMessage-only text bubbles."
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Heck, they're make the non-secure text bubbles RED just for scaring the users even more.
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ensure the interoperability of their instant messaging servicesÃ(TM) basic functionalities
That could be a game changer
Indeed it could - badly. Interconnecting two messaging networks with different security policies creates exciting opportunities for data leakage and hacking that only an espionage agency or phishing farm could love. How do you implement E2E between two completely different clients that can't share any code or secrets because they belong to different companies? Do you even bother to try, or do you automatically degrade any mandated interoperability communications to unencrypted and to hell with it? You can be fairly sure that these mandated interop APIs will be implemented as a bare-bones "technically it works, you can't sue us" afterthought.
At first yes. Then (hopefully) legislature is going to catch up with those shenanigans, and put a stop to them too. Industry will of course invent new ways to circumvent those, legislature will catch up, and so on. After several iterations we might end up with something reasonable. Every journey starts with the first step.
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Then (hopefully) legislature is going to catch up with those shenanigans
The only end-game I can see to that is that messaging becomes a regulated utility like the PSTN. It would seem to be the exact opposite goal from wanting to encourage new small players to jump in and disrupt an ecosystem - it would literally raise the barrier to entry for everyone by requiring mandated minimum technical standards.
Re: Punished for being too successful (Score:2)
1. You are NOT being FORCED to use the interconnect feature !
2. If you have sensitive communication then ensure both use the same app. Or better still encrypt with a separate app in your control
3. It's quite dumb to think that encryption protocol aren't standardized in this day n age. Entire internet works on encrypted endpoints seamlessly. Just stop drawing your Alice & Bob PKI diagrams
3. Next thing you will say voice communications between different telcos can't work, we can only call people on the sa
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I don't get all the call for this.
I currently can text with all my friends from my iPhone regardless if they have an iPhone or Android phone...works just fine.
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interoperate with other software, only seems like a negligible cost to implement
I'm betting you've never been involved in an interoperability project. Productizing internal APIs and exposing them to other people - and SUPPORTING them - is a huge effort and a never ending source of cost.
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What is this real estate you speak of? Do you mean your credit-card? Please give Slashdotters one if yours is "boundless". Or, your bank-account details, since they too, must be boundless. Maybe you should give us your phone number and passwords: Since we can harvest data from your phone without "bounds".
There's a lot of corporatism fanbois out there but I think you've reached "I'm a patriot" levels of delusion to claim FAANG can do no wrong.
Re: Punished for being too successful (Score:2)
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Not punished for being too successful. Punished for abusing their position of power.
Exactly this. For example, Apple isn't being punished for selling too many phones (by being forced somehow to sell fewer phones); they're being punished for preventing owners of an Apple phone from purchasing software from a source from which Apple doesn't get a 30% cut.
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Right, because Facebook doesn't have a de facto monopoly, and absolutely hasn't extended that monopoly by buying the competition. And Google absolutely doesn't have a monopoly on search. And Amazon isn't working every day to become a monopoly on sales. And Apple sure doesn't do anything that is anti-competitive, ever - certainly not with regards to messaging interoperability.
What a load of horseshit.
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Isn't this very similar to what republicans in the US are trying to do? Proposing that successful tech companies aren't allowed to merge or buy others and specifying a dollar amount that designates them as successful?
Who? (Score:2)
The US commentators here who are thoroughly approving of "The EU" or "The Europeans" ought to back up a little and have a look at who made this law. There is one democratically elected body in the structure of the EU: The European Parliament. It's not allowed to propose laws but exists only to rubber stamp laws made by the appointed, unelected European Commission! Imagine if the US Congress could not make a law but was only allowed to approve laws proposed by an unelected executive. That's the EU. It
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Kind of like how congress only approves laws proposed by unelected lobbyists?
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No. Not like that at all. Because congress can, and does, propose and enact legislation. The EU parliament is not able to propose a law. It's not allowed. It's elected but it's not an elected legislative body. It is impotent. A smokescreen. A veneer. A con.
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It is the European Commission that is NOT elected. The people on it are appointed by their governments.
The European Parliament IS Elected by the people across Europe. It can and does pass laws.
The commission is very powerful. Too powerful in my view but that does not count since we stupidly (IMHO) voted to leave the EU.
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Because congress can, and does, propose and enact legislation
Yeah, it would be a good idea if you took a look at how much of that legislation is actually written by corporate lawyers and then handed to congresscreeps for introduction.
The EU parliament is not able to propose a law. [...] It is [...] a con.
It cannot introduce legislation, but legislation cannot pass without its approval. Legislation is proposed by the Commission, which is approved by Parliament, which is directly elected. It's not clear how that's a con.
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More like how the US President is elected by the electoral college rather than by the general populous.
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Thank God.
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I've never been a huge fan of his...he gets a lot of things wrong.
He did get a lot of things right when he was in office, but not everything that falls out of his mouth, is gold.
In fact, most of his problem is his mouth.
But anyway....I'm a big fan of the electoral college. I do wish there were some changes...maybe each states' votes were proportional to the votes for each candidate, rather than winner takes all, but, that's a matter
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A lot of people don't seem to understand how the EU works. It's no like the United States or really any other governing bodies.
European Council - heads of member states (presidents and prime ministers) who set the larger goals and general direction that the EU takes.
Council of the European Union - ministers sent by member states, similar to domestic cabinet appointments. Provides a counterbalance for the Parliament.
European Parliament - elected MEPs from member states. Legislative and budgetary powers share
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Interesting.
As far as I knew, they were not electing a president, but she was appointed. But I did not realize the "house of representatives" has no actual legislative purpose.
I think we can probably discount a neutral court that can overrule badly written rules, too.
That really leaves a bad taste.
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Ignore him. Parts of EU are not elected directly to EU positions but EU is run by leaders of member countries. Those leaders are of course elected democratically. EU politics emerge out of political structures of member countries, not out of some made up structures run by secret elites. The facts that legislation passed by EU is later copied by lots of democratic countries all over the world proves how good this system is.
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EU is a purely aristocratic structure, designed by elites, for elites to minimize any potential impact of the plebs. Public vote with universal suffrage among citizens of age is held to elect utterly irrelevant and powerless "members of parliament". Actually relevant people like Commissars are elected by the aristocracy and are isolated from the populace by multiple layers of delegated power. In this regard, it's completely correct to note that EU is antidemocratic, as its entire structure is specifically d
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Switzerland exists.
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No, nation of Switzerland exists. Go and read about how this nation functions, because it's an excellent example of why your hypothesis on "all governments" is false.
Some governments, yes. All governments, no because there are governments that do not function that way. Such as Swiss one as one of many examples.
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What are you smoking? EU is a way better system then the failed US 'democracy'. While EU is passing laws that are later copied by the whole world (including parts of US), US politics turned into meaningless theatre, unable to pass any meaningful reforms.
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100% of the people who have any power to decide laws and regulations in the EU are elected. The European Parliament is elected directly (and no they don't just rubberstamp, and quite frequently reject laws, even those of interest to Slashdotters like the European Copyright Directive). The European Commission is headed by the European Council who hold all the power over the EC and who were each the head of state democratically elected by their people.
Don't make the mistake of attributing to it wisdom and an affiliation for democracy just because, from the outside, it *appears* to be democratic.
No. Democracy has no wisdom. If you attribute something to
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There is one member per member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state.[3] The Commission President (currently Ursula von der Leyen) is proposed by the European Council[4] (the 27 heads of state) and elected by the European Parliament.[5] The Council of the European Union (informally known as the Council of Ministers) then nominates the other members of the Commission in agreement
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The US commentators here who are thoroughly approving of "The EU" or "The Europeans" ought to back up a little and have a look at who made this law. There is one democratically elected body in the structure of the EU: The European Parliament. It's not allowed to propose laws but exists only to rubber stamp laws made by the appointed, unelected European Commission! Imagine if the US Congress could not make a law but was only allowed to approve laws proposed by an unelected executive. That's the EU. It is that bad. A farce. A travesty. In terms understood in the anglosphere of common law, elected legislatures etc. the EU is not just undemocratic but positively anti-democratic. Don't make the mistake of attributing to it wisdom and an affiliation for democracy just because, from the outside, it *appears* to be democratic. It isn't. It's a technocratic structure designed to negate national or democratic expression. Sometimes it makes good laws, other times not. But none of those laws are like the laws made by real democratic bodies such as the UK parliament or the US congress.
European Parliament is not democratically elected. A defining feature of democracy is that the ruling party changes from time to time. When was the last time Europe wasn't ruled by federalists? Federalists have managed to abuse the fact that people vote for national parties and the law of big numbers to basically end up with permanent power while still under pretense of "democratic" elections.
Spray Roundup on Apple's walled garden (Score:2)
I want to see this help spray some Roundup on Apple's walled garden approach. Agent Orange-level cleansing would be even better, but I'm skeptical.
The shills are comming... (Score:2)
Get ready for army of shills attacking EU for being undemocratic and defending Google and Facebook for only doing what's required by free market.
We, people actually living in EU have been waiting for this for many years. So glad this is finally happening.
I wish they'd just enforce the GDPR (Score:2)
Clearly the deterrents aren't strong enough currently. Even M$ has gone back to making their browser unremovable.
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What? GDPR has nothing to do with removable/unremovable browsers.
Understand the model and its history (Score:2)
You have to understand the model and its history to see what is going on here. The EU's model is not either of the Anglo Saxon ones.
In the UK version, all ministers are members of Parliament and all are locally elected by their constituency. Including the Prime Minister, who is the leader of the party which gets the most seats in Parliament and can, as the saying is, form a government, that is, command a stable majority in the legislature, Parliament, enough to govern. Party loses majority in the legisla
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OK, quit reading right there, as that is totally wrong.
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In the US version you have a directly elected President
OK, quit reading right there, as that is totally wrong.
Totally wrong is too strong here. In the US you have an election which has the sole purpose of choosing a president, which in the EU, there is not mechanism by which the electorate can decide on the President and express an opinion on whether said person should be president or not.