The EU has the big tech companies in its crosshairs again as next month it will propose a ‘revolutionary’ overhaul of digital regulation that many believe has been long coming. In December, the EU will introduce The Digital Services Act, which is expected to overhaul the management of content on platforms like Facebook and Google, which will be the first of its kind since 2000.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, last month defined some of the changes that might be included in any new regulations. ‘The new rules will … require digital services, especially the biggest platforms, to be open about the way they shape the digital world that we see. They’ll have to report on what they’ve done to take down illegal material’ she said. She went on to say ‘They’ll have to tell us how they decide what information and products to recommend to us, and which ones to hide, and give us the ability to influence those decisions, instead of simply having them made for us. And they will have to tell us who is paying for the ads that we see, and why we’ve been targeted by a certain ad’.
This is not the first time the EU has locked horns with US big techs firms. Over the last few years, the EU has launched several high-profile investigations into companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon over concerns that their market dominance is hindering competition. Although very little progress was made due to lengthy legal action.
However, whatever the EU proposes next month will have to be signed off both by member states and the European Parliament, which will take months, at the very minimum. And then it will only be the first step in legislation, with enforcement being a whole different ball game. It looks like both big tech and EU lawyers will be seeing a lot of each other over the next few months and years.