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EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

405 points by adrian_mrd 6y ago

Majestic121 6y ago
Link to the not that long source : https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_2347 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...
Quanttek 6y ago
Better article: https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-digital-markets-act-services-act-tech-competition-rules-margrethe-vestager-thierry-breton/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-digital-markets-act-s...
hpoe 6y ago
>" so would only come into force after the Brexit transition period has ended." Well so this isn't going to do anything for 40 years. > "Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based." I feel that this is very open to abuse especially with this example provided >"A commission spokesman gave the example of Amsterdam's local government being able to ask a service like Airbnb, which is based in Dublin, to remove a listing of a non-registered apartment and share details about a host suspected of not paying taxes." I get the feeling although this law started with the right idea it is being used as an excuse for law enforcement to expand their reach, without actually helping people.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I don’t see why that Airbnb example is problematic — enforcement of local laws using information not stored locally. The other option is requiring data to be stored within whichever jurisdiction the data concerns, which could be done but seems contrary to the point of the single market (not a huge difficulty if they can afford local translators and content moderators, but still against the point of the single market). Can you give a better example of how this could be abused?
  - xwdv 6y ago
    Raiding the illegal AirBNB and throwing the guests, often foreign, in prison and forcing them to pay huge fines to collect revenue.
    - avianlyric 6y ago
      What exactly would the guests be guilty of? This is EU we're talking about, we do actually have due process here.
    - TruthHurts44 6y ago
      And if they don't have the money to pay the fines we can keep them in a work camp... I hope you are joking about this.
- foota 6y ago
  That part's not about law enforcement, especially given the example it's probably about Ireland's use as a tax haven.
- avianlyric 6y ago
  >> " so would only come into force after the Brexit transition period has ended." > Well so this isn't going to do anything for 40 years. I wish, but it's pretty clear the brexit transition period is ending 17 days whether the UK is ready or (more likely) not. > I feel that this is very open to abuse especially with this example provided Not sure how else you could manage this. If you don't put this stipulation you'll end up with the privacy equivalent of the double-Irish. Where a smaller EU country either writes the weakest version of the law they can get away with, or just turns a blind eye to abuse, and uses that to attract companies like Facebook to move their "HQ" there. > I get the feeling although this law started with the right idea it is being used as an excuse for law enforcement to expand their reach, without actually helping people. Not sure how this is an example of a regulator expanding their reach. If a regulator has the authority to regulate the housing in a city, why should they not be able to force companies that help people actively flout their regulation to turn over details on those flouters. In the EU there's a cross-border agreement to help police identify car owners for speeding tickets etc. Is that also an over reach?
nannePOPI 6y ago
>"Likewise, all online stores must be able to trace traders selling goods via their platforms, in case they are offering counterfeit items or other illegal products." >"[It] will require online marketplaces to check their sellers' identity before they are allowed on the platform, which will make it so much more difficult for dodgy traders to do their business," commented Mr Breton. I see, it's another "let's regulate the big by removing small players from the market". Of course, of course. Totally not another gift to the bigs masked by helping normal people.
Majestic121 6y ago
A interesting point missing from the BBC article is that they have different levels of expectations between small to medium businesses and large ones, to avoid regulatory capture ? : > Platforms that reach more than 10% of the EU's population (45 million users) are considered systemic in nature, and are subject not only to specific obligations to control their own risks, but also to a new oversight structure. Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope that 'private platform can act as they wish since they are private' : > The Digital Markets Act addresses the negative consequences arising from certain behaviours by platforms acting as digital “gatekeepers” to the single market. ... This can grant them the power to act as private rule-makers and to function as bottlenecks between businesses and consumers. The road is still long before ratification, but it looks like a step in the good direction.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > A interesting point missing from the BBC article is that they have different levels of expectations between small to medium businesses and large ones, to avoid regulatory capture ? : It's easy to overlook, but the BBC article does have this line: > It introduces a sliding scale, under which firms take on more obligations the larger and more influential they are. > Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope that 'private platform can act as they wish since they are private' : In the US we have a similar trope with respect to social media companies, that they don't have a responsibility to protect free speech because they are a private entity; however, they also argue that they aren't responsible when they curate illegal content. EDIT: Wow, I didn't expect this to be a controversial or particularly unpopular comment. I wonder if downvoters could elaborate a bit on their objections?
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > they don't have a responsibility to protect free speech because they are a private entity It continually amazes me when I see people who are ostensibly on the left trotting out this chestnut like as though it's even remotely a valid argument for the curtailment of one of the most important rights over the past few centuries. It's like as though they're in complete denial about the idea that this kind of speech control could ever negatively impact them. Must be nice to be completely aligned with corporatism to the extend that your personal set of values is literally dictated to you by the Google HR department.
throwaway894345 6y ago
> The operators of online platforms - such as social media apps and video-sharing sites of any size - must prioritise complaints raised by "trusted flaggers", who have a track record of highlighting valid problems. Who determines which problems are valid? Unless I overlooked something, this article seems really vague. > Likewise, all online stores must be able to trace traders selling goods via their platforms, in case they are offering counterfeit items or other illegal products. "[It] will require online marketplaces to check their sellers' identity before they are allowed on the platform, which will make it so much more difficult for dodgy traders to do their business," commented Mr Breton. I'm excited about the crackdown on counterfeit products, but I also wonder if it will raise the barrier of entry for sellers (if Amazon has to spend money to validate a given seller, why should they do business with smaller sellers?). Hopefully this authentication mechanism can be inexpensive such that it doesn't disenfranchise too much legitimate business at the small end of the spectrum; big players already enjoy tremendous regulatory advantages over smaller players--no need to compound it further. > In addition, once a year they must publish a report into their handling of major risks, including users posting illegal content, disinformation that could sway elections, and the unjustified targeting of minority groups. I'm really wary of "disinformation that could sway elections" and "unjustified targeting of minority groups"; how do you litigate these fairly? One person's "racial advocacy" is another person's "racial patronization". These seem super subjective and thus ripe for abuse. Hopefully this too is just a case of poor journalism and the legislation is better.
- FleaFlicker99 6y ago
  > must prioritise complaints raised by "trusted flaggers" That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very carefully, but now we're elevating some specific people to be 'more equal' than others? Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I can see that opening a can of worms. I don't live in the EU, but just like that well intentioned but shortsighted cookie law, the rest of us will have to deal with the fallout of that for a long time to come.
  - tarsiec 6y ago
    Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I assumed their level of "trustworthy" comes from them consistently flagging content or issues of the platform and those reports being valid, as some sort of reputation system, and not some users being selected for more arbitrary reasons. I could be wrong though.
fsflover 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25428091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25428091
908B64B197 6y ago
If you can't compete, better slap successful companies with regulations, more red tape and arbitrary fines! That creates good unionized civil servant jobs to work out all these new compliance regulations! Good for reelection I assume.
- thrower123 6y ago
  Moreover, you're cutting your throat by introducing yet more regulation that only established players can afford to comply with. All of the previous steps in this direction have been massive boons to Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    Exactly! But all that compliance busy-work is generally done in the country that enacts these regulations. So you just created a bunch of non-technical jobs at tech companies. Meanwhile, engineering is still done in California.
    - mrlala 6y ago
      Are you both done jerking each other off yet?
richwater 6y ago
Once again governments pushing their responsibilities onto corporations.
- a_diplomat 6y ago
  Actually no, it's the opposite. It's governments regulating companies, and thereby taking responsibility. Going a step further would make governments actively intervene in day-to-day-operations.
  - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    Ehh one of the major complaints about EU legislation is it's left intentionally vague and relies on the companies to guess what the goal is, which of course misses something, take their yearly fines and tweak their system after each round of fines.
tedunangst 6y ago
Does this prevent Apple from shipping iMessage by default on iPhones unless they bundle Facebook and WhatsApp, etc.?
- youeseh 6y ago
  I think what they're trying to do is force Apple (and other OS makers) to provide the ability to uninstall built-in apps. So, your iPhone will come with Apple's default messaging app, but you would potentially have the ability to uninstall it.
  - tedunangst 6y ago
    It also says their own app can't be placed more favorably on the screen, and a default app certainly sounds more favorable than one not on the screen.
    - youeseh 6y ago
      Hehe, for sure. I suppose if we extrapolated the governance goals: break up large companies into smaller parts to create a more competitive marketplace. So, maybe a powerful enough government may say, "no, Apple, you're not even allowed to make apps that compete with 3rd party makers - you can only provide a platform" By today's standards, that would be quite revolutionary. Such a government would have to do the same to Costco, Microsoft, Amazon, and any number of platforms on which smaller vendors earn their bread.
plandis 6y ago
> Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based. That just sounds like the opposite of privacy and additionally restrictions on free speech. If Poland doesn’t like a YouTube video criticizing their government it sounds like they now have a legal framework to get that removed, for example.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Is imposing restrictions on foreign companies bad?
  - plandis 6y ago
    If your intention is to hinder foreign competition, then yes. If it ends up doing that then I’d expect the US to take it to the WTO.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      Actions against Huawei might also be taken to the WTO but I still believe that there are valid concerns there.
DrNuke 6y ago
From the EU perspective, this is aimed at disentangling fundamental services for the general public from private corp monopolies. Good in principle, very difficult to implement?
- 6510 6y ago
  It would be easier to throw away the code and have the EU create its own cloned services. I look at software as mostly prototyping. By now we've figured out that email is something we want. Buy some servers and create a mailbox for the citizens. Have an open source feature set. Let people make add-ons, migrate some of these into the default set. It will be hard to get in the way of it becoming something nice and useful.
Solvitieg 6y ago
Doesn't look like the type of regulation we were hoping for. The regulation seems to apply to content moderation and controlling information. Basically the exact opposite of what we need.
- mojzu 6y ago
  Yeah, based on the article Facebook reactly quite positively to the proposed laws, which isn't a good sign. I'd like to be proven wrong, and there are some parts I like, such as not allowing preinstalled/unremovable apps. But on the whole I think the increased moderation/verification burdens are just going to cement existing companies in their market position, and create all kinds of oppurtunities for corruption in how content moderation disputes are handled.
  - jsmith45 6y ago
    Well corruption in how disputes are handled might not be a huge issue. As a first step the companies are required to allow you to appeal takedowns and account suspensions/terminations (for TOS or illegal content reasons, not for non-payment reasons) for a 6 month period. Further, if you appeal a takedown or account suspension and the company rejects your appeal, the law will allow you to take the matter to binding arbitration. If the user wins, the company pays all costs, and must reinstate the content or account. If the user loses, they only pay their portion of arbitration costs. (The company's portion are just part of doing business in the EU). Oh and the user (not the company) get to decide which arbitrator to use, from among those that have been certified by any Member state, with the relevant expertise for the type of social network and content or TOS violation in question. Obviously all of this is subject to change if the proposed law is changed before being enacted.
    - mojzu 6y ago
      Those seem like some decent mitigations, but I still have a hard time believing that wealthy corporations and people won't be able to abuse such a system for their own gain as they have done with the DMCA. And how those well meaning restrictions could easily throttle a competitive startup, because Facebook et al have the scale, technical and legal experience to handle these things whereas they may not
jelling 6y ago
> let users uninstall pre-installed apps on their platform and use different software Assuming it passes, I wonder what this means for Apple's Siri.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  That users should be able to uninstall it. People like Siri, so I don't really anticipate a precipitatious drop-off -- the people who will be uninstalling Siri are the people who currently don't use it, so I'd expect a drop in install base without any drop in MUA.
- jbjbjbjb 6y ago
  I’d imagine for something like Siri they’d argue it is too deeply embedded to be replaced and the rules would have exemptions for that. I think the rules applies more to superfluous apps on Windows and Android that you can’t remove like the Xbox app on Windows or having Facebook preinstalled on Android.
claydavisss 6y ago
Boo. The EU has had as much time as anyone to build a native digital economy. The web was born in Europe (TBL was working at a Euro science facility when he created it). Yet despite having an educated populace, wealth, infrastructure, and a bureaucracy that will favor homegrown tech, they are definitely behind North America and Asia and arguably behind India and even Africa. No one is asking the tough question - why can't the EU build?
cody3222 6y ago
Where's our comment from HN user "dang" to tell us all the related articles?
- sveme 6y ago
  You know that dang is employed by ycombinator to moderate hackernews?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  dang often points to a previous discussion of the same article. As this BBC article was created four hours ago, that seems unlikely. If there are two discussions of the same event, dang sometimes adds a comment to the smaller discussion pointing to the larger one. If neither of those are true... what, exactly, do you want him to do?
easton 6y ago
The not allowing uninstallable apps part is interesting. Looking through their FAQ, they don't really seem to define what a "app" is. Could this not mean the entire OS should be replaceable with one that wasn't made by a "gatekeeper"? Because if say, Apple, allows you to remove Messages.app but keeps the Messages API private or locked behind an Apple-only entitlement, that isn't very useful, and the user should be able to load another OS at their discretion that lets them run whatever SMS client they want. Unless they want to require that all of the system services be able to be accessed by whatever app the user installs, which seems like a bigger kettle of fish.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > all of the system services be able to be accessed by whatever app the user installs It would be nice if they started by requiring that phone OSes add back the ability for apps to put the phone into / out of Airplane Mode. The API for that used to be available to unrooted Android phones, until version 4.2.2 came out which broke some apps[0]. A phone should be able to listen on Wi-Fi (or even FM) for a packet that indicates an incoming call, so that the rest of the time it can be disconnected from the cellular network and not reveal the user's approximate location. [0] https://apkpure.com/scheduled-airplane-mode-root/com.galaxy.scheduled_airplane_mode https://apkpure.com/scheduled-airplane-mode-root/com.galaxy....
fadsfsafadf123 6y ago
Sometimes I think GDPR was secretly pushed by Big Tech to make it harder for smaller business's to compete. It was basically useless. I wouldn't even be surprised if Google or Facebook helped write the legislation. Whatever noise EU is making now I have very little hope for. If the US government was so fearful that a fun video app made in China had the power of compromising National Security, stealing and spying on citizen's data, and even radicalizing people through their mobile Skinner Boxes and algo-driven Ludovico Technique pleasure therapy apps -------- you would think they would be doing WAY more, WAY faster.
- buisi 6y ago
  The GDPR is good in spirit as it forces a certain standard of privacy, but it is extremely vague (which means countries can effectively neuter it, or it could be over-enforced), and there is an extraterritorial component which set the precedent for global take-downs of content.
- bloodorange 6y ago
  "It was basically useless" Could you elaborate and perhaps point towards what makes you think this way? I ask because I have worked in a rather large corporation which had to implement massive changes to ensure they were being more respectful and careful towards user data. In my experience, the GDPR made them take it seriously which was otherwise ignored as it allowed them to profit off being negligent about these things. Also, it's a bit like food handling and storage related regulations for restaurants. While it might seem like a pain for the guy running the restaurant, it helps reduce the risk the consumers could otherwise face.
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    GDPR only matters if the EU has jurisdiction. If it's a website run from China then GDPR can't really do anything. A better first step would've been to limit the information that's being sent out in the first place - the browsers and OS. If people had better control over what their computer sends out then the privacy issues would be much less worrying. After that you can talk about limitations on who can do what with the data. Just having the latter means that people are still leaking all of their data, but companies are basically just promising not to use it.
melenaboija 6y ago
I don't have much idea about regulations but I have the feeling that western countries reactions in this terms have been slow. I am not sure if this has been intentional to not slow the fast pace of the industry, they could just nod do it or they have not realized the impact of it. I think in some way the the almost immediate reaction to most of the regulatory problems that appeared during the COVID pandemic demonstrate that is possible to solve some of the bureaucratic barriers if needed. Not comparing the situations per se at but yes the practical resolutions.
ericra 6y ago
[Original Source Press Release](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_2347 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...) I found this bit promising: "Concretely, the Digital Markets Act will: - Prohibit a number of practices which are clearly unfair, such as blocking users from un-installing any pre-installed software or apps; " I'm curious about what other "clearly unfair" practices they are referring tho, but this alone could have implications for potentially getting rid of bundled applications on Android phones, as an example. This assumes that the clause extends to the Android operating system as it is installed on devices made by manufacturers possibly not regulated under these Acts.
- Veedrac 6y ago
  Bundling is explicitly allowed by the regulation. Some examples of other ‘clearly unfair’ practices are restricting the use of third-party software or stores, or preventing them from accessing them other than from the company's channels. The full proposal is here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/proposal-regulation-single-market-digital-services-digital-services-act_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/proposal-regulati...
dontTango 6y ago
And just like that, big tech becomes an oligarchy. That, or Europe becomes further disconnected to the rest of the world.
baxtr 6y ago
Ok, I will probably get downvoted for this. But I will still speak my mind: I am an EU citizen and I don’t think that’s the right approach because it’s distracting from what really happened: We missed the big Internet bus because we were so much focused on keeping things the way they were. Now we try to regulate us out. It makes me unbelievably sad. And it continues. The car was invented here but it takes an Australian visionary to push our car companies into the future. I am sure we will want to regulate Tesla soon too.
- nickpp 6y ago
  Another EU citizen here, resonating with your words. It seems that Europe has decided to stop evolving and just do anything to protect the status quo. All these regulations just trying to keep those damn disruptors at bay. Innovation is forbidden here. But hey! It’s for our own good.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    >It seems that Europe has decided to stop evolving and just do anything to protect the status quo. Innovation is forbidden here. But hey! It’s for our own good. Yeah, this. Europe is an old continent that's mostly old money. The Europeans of today are rich mostly due to inherited wealth and former imperialism, not wealth they created themselves through innovation, with some families tracing their wealth back for centuries when land was cheap and plentiful and taxes were next to nothing that any hardworking person could buy land and build a business and while the wealth didn't go stratospheric, it still multiplied handsomely for their successors since "time in the market beats timing the market". If you look at Europe's biggest and wealthiest companies, most of them are several decades if not centuries old with some of their major shareholders still being old European nobility, in contrast to the US where the top tech companies are at most 30 years old, with older ones that fail to innovate always dying in a healthy cycle (IBM, Sun, Oracle, SGI, etc.), leaving room for new players(FAANG) to come on the market and eat the lunch of the dinosaurs. While in Europe, with so much of the pie taken by the old players, there's no more room for new players to spring up since the old established ones pulled the ladder up after them. The image of the typical wealthy successful German is not that of a hip 20-30 year old who built some cool business in his dorm room or his parents' garage like in the US, but of a 40 year old man with a Porsche who inherited his dad's machine shop and rolodex(typical owner of the famous Mittelstand that's always revered here on HN). All this old wealth is very risk adverse and feels threatened by disruptions and will fight tooth and nail to keep their status quo.
ericra 6y ago
This is interesting timing given the FTC announcement for data collection from social media companies in the US yesterday. I wonder if there is any connection here like some government cooperation happening behind the scenes. The two events have differences and apply to a slightly different set of companies, but they are both in the spirit of trying to control or better understand how big tech companies are operating (and especially, using customer data).
nbzso 6y ago
Another money grab from EU bureaucrats. Control the narrative in digital space, regulate small businesses, and get the position of Gatekeeper from big tech. It looks nice on paper.
- TruthHurts44 6y ago
  The money for huge clientele networks milking the EU funds in Eastern Europe and the money for propping up losing businesses and bloated social services in Western Europe have to come from somewhere.
  - nbzso 6y ago
    It's simple. EU stops giving money to corrupt Eastern Europe criminals masked as a "politicians". The people there have not gained nothing. EU regulations are made to serve agendas of big members only.
- maltelandwehr 6y ago
  In the current system all the money flows to Google, Facebook, etc. and they evade EU taxes. So, yes. A money grab. One that is dearly needed for the EU!
breck 6y ago
> The idea is to prevent the firms gaining unfair advantages via their elevated positions. Anyone who is serious about this needs to stop attacking all the symptoms and address the root cause of Big Tech's monopoly power: Imaginary Property Laws ("IP"). Everything else is just tissues to sooth a runny nose instead of medicine to fight the virus. End IP and bring real competition and democratization to Big Tech.
buisi 6y ago
> The focus of the Digital Services Act is to create a single set of rules for the EU to keep users safe online, protect their freedom of expression and help both them and local authorities hold tech companies to account. You can either have freedom of expression or safety online. You can't have both. And the second might be an impossible goal regardless.
- avianlyric 6y ago
  The world isn't so black and white. Even in the US, the home of free speech, you can't post child pornogaphy online. You could easily put forward the argument then that freedom of expression doesn't exist in the US. Freedom of expression has never really meant you're completely free to say and anything (at least no in a civilized world). There are always going to be gray areas, but equally there are areas where expression should obviously be protected. An example would be, if Facebook decided to eradicate all homosexual content. Clearly the EU stepping in and saying you can't discriminate against gay speech is protecting the gay communities freedom of expression. Equally the EU stepping in and saying the Facebook isn't doing enough to protect victims of revenge porn is providing safety online. And is a reasonable balance between the rights of free expression from the poster vs the victim.
  - buisi 6y ago
    Let us say the internet was created 50 years ago, and Facebook decided to eradicate all homosexual content. Perhaps, not even maliciously but as collateral damage for another goal. Would it have been as shocking or obviously bad?
    - avianlyric 6y ago
      The internet is not the only place the social changes happens. Equally the EU isn't applying the same regulation to every company, the most significant ones only apply to companies with 10% market share. It would be quite plausible for gay friendly social networks to spring up to fill that gap, and I would entirely expect it to happen. Apps like Grindr basically proves it would happen.
buisi 6y ago
It's weird how politicians never talk about regulating Visa and Mastercard. They too can pick and choose who they do business with (freedom of expression). There are a lot of middle-men with a lot of power who get ignored in favor of chasing the most popular target of the day.
- Sargos 6y ago
  > It's weird how politicians never talk about regulating Visa and Mastercard These are two of the most heavily regulated corporations in the world. I don't even understand the premise of your comment. Banking and money is extremely regulated and they have to ask for permission to do pretty much anything.
  - buisi 6y ago
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-are-trying-dictate-what-you-can-watch-pornhub https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar... Not the most sympathetic target, but it goes to show how much power they have. If they can do it against such a big target, can't they do it against anyone?
ANarrativeApe 6y ago
Watching this with great interest. The platform we are launching next year is focused on letting people vote the $40 trillion in shares they own through their collective investments. A core feature is the ability to support externally proposed company resolutions so that they trigger minority shareholder rights, creating a mechanism for getting the issues that matter to you onto the only corporate agenda that counts. We'll be operating 'Citizen Shareholder Assemblies' in which anyone will be able to participate. We're super aware of the need for open debate and free speech but at the same time we want arguments to be based on data. As Citizen Shareholders are able to follow the voting pattern of Default Advisors, we are particularly keen on preventing the 'obtaining of votes by deception'. You'd think there would be lot's of best practice we could follow from the wonderful world of politics, but it turns out that isn't a thing in the 'real world'. If we achieve our ambitions in a few years we will have 10% of the EU population, and even more in the US (103.7 million US citizens own shares through collective investments). Rather than waiting for problems to arise we are looking to get ahead of this curve. We have a number of things going for us, 1. we are not reliant on advertising revenues 2. we will know who everyone is (free speech doesn't have to equal anonymous speech) and 3. we have so many examples of how not to do this. We ;ook forward to the constructive criticism we will undoubtedly get from groups like hacker news. Any upfront thoughts would be much appreciated.
didibus 6y ago
Ok, most of those do seem reasonable to me. That said, I still wonder where all this motivation comes from? Have we really shown that big tech is harmful? And exactly to what kind of harm? And how we know alternatives arn't more harmful?
nalekberov 6y ago
And how they are going to prevent millions of websites from using Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel etc. in their websites?
nilshauk 6y ago
As a European citizen I’m hopeful for this regulation. The tech giants would rather police themselves, but they should be subject to oversight to ensure that they don’t abuse their market power. If this goes well I hope to see more competition and more innovation. I don’t believe that this will send Europe into some digital dark age, if anything it will make it easier for small to medium businesses to compete and innovate.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
danielfoster 6y ago
> Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based. The article goes on to give an example of how Amsterdam could use the law to request earnings data for local hosts from Airbnb. The way the BBC explains it, this law would give EU governments ready access to user data with no oversight. This represents a huge loss of privacy and freedom for EU residents.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Having Dutch law apply to the owners of Dutch property doesn't seem like a huge government overreach. If, however, the law ends up giving the Dutch government information about, for example, Estonian freelancers, then there would be reason to complain. The "smell test" for this will be whether the person whose data is accessed is allowed to be informed by the service provider when a government request comes in, and from which government, and why.
- M2Ys4U 6y ago
  These Regulations are explicitly without prejudice to data protection legislation, including the GDPR and LED. In other words, if there's a conflict between the GDPR and the DSM then the GDPR prevails.
g_p 6y ago
Articles 5 and 6 are the ones of most interest. A quick summary: - no preventing businesses from using other intermediaries (i.e. payment processors for app stores) - ensuring businesses can contract with users outside the platform, and then fulfil the contract via the platform (i.e. selling an app directly, but delivering via a store/platform) - not use data gained as a platform operator to compete with the businesses on the platform giving that data And the big one: - "allow the installation and effective use of third party software applications or software application stores [...] to be accessed by means other than the core platform services of that gatekeeper"
pgt 6y ago
Rules should apply symmetrically to any Big State body that makes them, such as the European Union.
0xfaded 6y ago
One consequence is that this will continue to keep European tech valuations low. Silicon valley startup valuations allow some crazy and amazing ideas to be tried, but it's all based a premise that startups may one day become a unicorns. This also supports Silicon Valley level wages, which are almost non existent in Europe. Now not only has the EU declared unicorns unwelcome, but also European users will be discounted, and perhaps even become a liability, if an EU startup seeks an exit to a US buyer. That's a huge problem since all major EU exits are sales to US buyers. It's pretty clear the Silicon valley innovation model didn't work for Europe. But Europe still needs to figure out how to get money circulating back into productive capital. Negative interest rates mean you can park your money in real estate and ride the stagflation. The current model seems to be for the government to fund all R&D, but please trust me as someone who spends way too much time writing grant applications that this model sucks.
- imiric 6y ago
  As a consumer I can't see that as anything but positive. Most SV unicorns are overvalued and their technology is not nearly as important to the world as they think it is. Once they reach a certain scale it can easily do more harm than good. The endless pursuit to "disrupt" and grow to please shareholders is the wrong dangling carrot for entrepreneurs. It only promotes "growth hacking" and other shady get-rich-quick schemes. I'm not a fan of more government oversight, but it's a good thing if it can control some of these tech giants.
  - 0xfaded 6y ago
    As a consumer I also believe something that needs to be done to regulate big tech, but the problem of directing money into productive capital is huge. Every unicorn's valuation is basically realized by establishing some sort of monopoly or monopsony. This leads to another less-than-ideal situation, where companies are incentivized to spend money protecting their monopoly instead of innovating. Fundamentally this is bad. But it turns out that the capital cost of new technology is extremely high, and it becomes a corollary that anyone who wants to spend their lives developing the next technology should locate themselves in the most favorable funding environment. Europe can avoid being a tech backwater if it can figure out how to provide a favorable funding environment. One technocratic solution would be to make it the governments problem to reap reasonable returns from tech. Offering every citizen the option of purchasing up to 100.000 euros in tech bonds yielding 5% that EU governments become responsible for investing would unleash trillions of euros while exerting significant pressure on unproductive assets.
newsgourmet 6y ago
What if they made the same rules about news outlets, would people also cheer them on?
easytiger 6y ago
Regulate or shake down? It's a proxy war against Irish tax independence. Tax harmonisation and geo revenue targeting are the goal.
siljon 6y ago
As a European citizen I find it amazing that there are so many people in here saying there is no cities in EU that can compare with Silicon Valley. A growing city that creates reliable technology in Europe is Stockholm [1]. Which apparently is the second city after Silicon valley producing unicorn companies per capita in the world. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-stockholm-becoming-silicon-valley-europe-jose-berengueres-1d https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-stockholm-becoming-silico...
- def_true_false 6y ago
  Since when is Klarna considered reliable? Last I checked they couldn't even produce a working checkout UI.

405 points by adrian_mrd 6y ago

Link to the not that long source : https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_2347 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...

Quanttek 6y ago

Better article: https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-digital-markets-act-services-act-tech-competition-rules-margrethe-vestager-thierry-breton/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-digital-markets-act-s...

hpoe 6y ago

>" so would only come into force after the Brexit transition period has ended." Well so this isn't going to do anything for 40 years. > "Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based." I feel that this is very open to abuse especially with this example provided >"A commission spokesman gave the example of Amsterdam's local government being able to ask a service like Airbnb, which is based in Dublin, to remove a listing of a non-registered apartment and share details about a host suspected of not paying taxes." I get the feeling although this law started with the right idea it is being used as an excuse for law enforcement to expand their reach, without actually helping people.

ben_w 6y ago
I don’t see why that Airbnb example is problematic — enforcement of local laws using information not stored locally. The other option is requiring data to be stored within whichever jurisdiction the data concerns, which could be done but seems contrary to the point of the single market (not a huge difficulty if they can afford local translators and content moderators, but still against the point of the single market). Can you give a better example of how this could be abused?
- xwdv 6y ago
  Raiding the illegal AirBNB and throwing the guests, often foreign, in prison and forcing them to pay huge fines to collect revenue.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    What exactly would the guests be guilty of? This is EU we're talking about, we do actually have due process here.
  - TruthHurts44 6y ago
    And if they don't have the money to pay the fines we can keep them in a work camp... I hope you are joking about this.
foota 6y ago
That part's not about law enforcement, especially given the example it's probably about Ireland's use as a tax haven.
avianlyric 6y ago
>> " so would only come into force after the Brexit transition period has ended." > Well so this isn't going to do anything for 40 years. I wish, but it's pretty clear the brexit transition period is ending 17 days whether the UK is ready or (more likely) not. > I feel that this is very open to abuse especially with this example provided Not sure how else you could manage this. If you don't put this stipulation you'll end up with the privacy equivalent of the double-Irish. Where a smaller EU country either writes the weakest version of the law they can get away with, or just turns a blind eye to abuse, and uses that to attract companies like Facebook to move their "HQ" there. > I get the feeling although this law started with the right idea it is being used as an excuse for law enforcement to expand their reach, without actually helping people. Not sure how this is an example of a regulator expanding their reach. If a regulator has the authority to regulate the housing in a city, why should they not be able to force companies that help people actively flout their regulation to turn over details on those flouters. In the EU there's a cross-border agreement to help police identify car owners for speeding tickets etc. Is that also an over reach?

nannePOPI 6y ago

>"Likewise, all online stores must be able to trace traders selling goods via their platforms, in case they are offering counterfeit items or other illegal products." >"[It] will require online marketplaces to check their sellers' identity before they are allowed on the platform, which will make it so much more difficult for dodgy traders to do their business," commented Mr Breton. I see, it's another "let's regulate the big by removing small players from the market". Of course, of course. Totally not another gift to the bigs masked by helping normal people.

Majestic121 6y ago

A interesting point missing from the BBC article is that they have different levels of expectations between small to medium businesses and large ones, to avoid regulatory capture ? : > Platforms that reach more than 10% of the EU's population (45 million users) are considered systemic in nature, and are subject not only to specific obligations to control their own risks, but also to a new oversight structure. Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope that 'private platform can act as they wish since they are private' : > The Digital Markets Act addresses the negative consequences arising from certain behaviours by platforms acting as digital “gatekeepers” to the single market. ... This can grant them the power to act as private rule-makers and to function as bottlenecks between businesses and consumers. The road is still long before ratification, but it looks like a step in the good direction.

throwaway894345 6y ago
> A interesting point missing from the BBC article is that they have different levels of expectations between small to medium businesses and large ones, to avoid regulatory capture ? : It's easy to overlook, but the BBC article does have this line: > It introduces a sliding scale, under which firms take on more obligations the larger and more influential they are. > Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope that 'private platform can act as they wish since they are private' : In the US we have a similar trope with respect to social media companies, that they don't have a responsibility to protect free speech because they are a private entity; however, they also argue that they aren't responsible when they curate illegal content. EDIT: Wow, I didn't expect this to be a controversial or particularly unpopular comment. I wonder if downvoters could elaborate a bit on their objections?
- core-questions 6y ago
  > they don't have a responsibility to protect free speech because they are a private entity It continually amazes me when I see people who are ostensibly on the left trotting out this chestnut like as though it's even remotely a valid argument for the curtailment of one of the most important rights over the past few centuries. It's like as though they're in complete denial about the idea that this kind of speech control could ever negatively impact them. Must be nice to be completely aligned with corporatism to the extend that your personal set of values is literally dictated to you by the Google HR department.

throwaway894345 6y ago

> The operators of online platforms - such as social media apps and video-sharing sites of any size - must prioritise complaints raised by "trusted flaggers", who have a track record of highlighting valid problems. Who determines which problems are valid? Unless I overlooked something, this article seems really vague. > Likewise, all online stores must be able to trace traders selling goods via their platforms, in case they are offering counterfeit items or other illegal products. "[It] will require online marketplaces to check their sellers' identity before they are allowed on the platform, which will make it so much more difficult for dodgy traders to do their business," commented Mr Breton. I'm excited about the crackdown on counterfeit products, but I also wonder if it will raise the barrier of entry for sellers (if Amazon has to spend money to validate a given seller, why should they do business with smaller sellers?). Hopefully this authentication mechanism can be inexpensive such that it doesn't disenfranchise too much legitimate business at the small end of the spectrum; big players already enjoy tremendous regulatory advantages over smaller players--no need to compound it further. > In addition, once a year they must publish a report into their handling of major risks, including users posting illegal content, disinformation that could sway elections, and the unjustified targeting of minority groups. I'm really wary of "disinformation that could sway elections" and "unjustified targeting of minority groups"; how do you litigate these fairly? One person's "racial advocacy" is another person's "racial patronization". These seem super subjective and thus ripe for abuse. Hopefully this too is just a case of poor journalism and the legislation is better.

FleaFlicker99 6y ago
> must prioritise complaints raised by "trusted flaggers" That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very carefully, but now we're elevating some specific people to be 'more equal' than others? Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I can see that opening a can of worms. I don't live in the EU, but just like that well intentioned but shortsighted cookie law, the rest of us will have to deal with the fallout of that for a long time to come.
- tarsiec 6y ago
  Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I assumed their level of "trustworthy" comes from them consistently flagging content or issues of the platform and those reports being valid, as some sort of reputation system, and not some users being selected for more arbitrary reasons. I could be wrong though.

fsflover 6y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25428091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25428091

908B64B197 6y ago

If you can't compete, better slap successful companies with regulations, more red tape and arbitrary fines! That creates good unionized civil servant jobs to work out all these new compliance regulations! Good for reelection I assume.

thrower123 6y ago
Moreover, you're cutting your throat by introducing yet more regulation that only established players can afford to comply with. All of the previous steps in this direction have been massive boons to Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Exactly! But all that compliance busy-work is generally done in the country that enacts these regulations. So you just created a bunch of non-technical jobs at tech companies. Meanwhile, engineering is still done in California.
  - mrlala 6y ago
    Are you both done jerking each other off yet?

richwater 6y ago

Once again governments pushing their responsibilities onto corporations.

a_diplomat 6y ago
Actually no, it's the opposite. It's governments regulating companies, and thereby taking responsibility. Going a step further would make governments actively intervene in day-to-day-operations.
- tick_tock_tick 6y ago
  Ehh one of the major complaints about EU legislation is it's left intentionally vague and relies on the companies to guess what the goal is, which of course misses something, take their yearly fines and tweak their system after each round of fines.

tedunangst 6y ago

Does this prevent Apple from shipping iMessage by default on iPhones unless they bundle Facebook and WhatsApp, etc.?

youeseh 6y ago
I think what they're trying to do is force Apple (and other OS makers) to provide the ability to uninstall built-in apps. So, your iPhone will come with Apple's default messaging app, but you would potentially have the ability to uninstall it.
- tedunangst 6y ago
  It also says their own app can't be placed more favorably on the screen, and a default app certainly sounds more favorable than one not on the screen.
  - youeseh 6y ago
    Hehe, for sure. I suppose if we extrapolated the governance goals: break up large companies into smaller parts to create a more competitive marketplace. So, maybe a powerful enough government may say, "no, Apple, you're not even allowed to make apps that compete with 3rd party makers - you can only provide a platform" By today's standards, that would be quite revolutionary. Such a government would have to do the same to Costco, Microsoft, Amazon, and any number of platforms on which smaller vendors earn their bread.

plandis 6y ago

> Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based. That just sounds like the opposite of privacy and additionally restrictions on free speech. If Poland doesn’t like a YouTube video criticizing their government it sounds like they now have a legal framework to get that removed, for example.

Hamuko 6y ago
Is imposing restrictions on foreign companies bad?
- plandis 6y ago
  If your intention is to hinder foreign competition, then yes. If it ends up doing that then I’d expect the US to take it to the WTO.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    Actions against Huawei might also be taken to the WTO but I still believe that there are valid concerns there.

DrNuke 6y ago

From the EU perspective, this is aimed at disentangling fundamental services for the general public from private corp monopolies. Good in principle, very difficult to implement?

6510 6y ago
It would be easier to throw away the code and have the EU create its own cloned services. I look at software as mostly prototyping. By now we've figured out that email is something we want. Buy some servers and create a mailbox for the citizens. Have an open source feature set. Let people make add-ons, migrate some of these into the default set. It will be hard to get in the way of it becoming something nice and useful.

Solvitieg 6y ago

Doesn't look like the type of regulation we were hoping for. The regulation seems to apply to content moderation and controlling information. Basically the exact opposite of what we need.

mojzu 6y ago
Yeah, based on the article Facebook reactly quite positively to the proposed laws, which isn't a good sign. I'd like to be proven wrong, and there are some parts I like, such as not allowing preinstalled/unremovable apps. But on the whole I think the increased moderation/verification burdens are just going to cement existing companies in their market position, and create all kinds of oppurtunities for corruption in how content moderation disputes are handled.
- jsmith45 6y ago
  Well corruption in how disputes are handled might not be a huge issue. As a first step the companies are required to allow you to appeal takedowns and account suspensions/terminations (for TOS or illegal content reasons, not for non-payment reasons) for a 6 month period. Further, if you appeal a takedown or account suspension and the company rejects your appeal, the law will allow you to take the matter to binding arbitration. If the user wins, the company pays all costs, and must reinstate the content or account. If the user loses, they only pay their portion of arbitration costs. (The company's portion are just part of doing business in the EU). Oh and the user (not the company) get to decide which arbitrator to use, from among those that have been certified by any Member state, with the relevant expertise for the type of social network and content or TOS violation in question. Obviously all of this is subject to change if the proposed law is changed before being enacted.
  - mojzu 6y ago
    Those seem like some decent mitigations, but I still have a hard time believing that wealthy corporations and people won't be able to abuse such a system for their own gain as they have done with the DMCA. And how those well meaning restrictions could easily throttle a competitive startup, because Facebook et al have the scale, technical and legal experience to handle these things whereas they may not

jelling 6y ago

> let users uninstall pre-installed apps on their platform and use different software Assuming it passes, I wonder what this means for Apple's Siri.

freeone3000 6y ago
That users should be able to uninstall it. People like Siri, so I don't really anticipate a precipitatious drop-off -- the people who will be uninstalling Siri are the people who currently don't use it, so I'd expect a drop in install base without any drop in MUA.
jbjbjbjb 6y ago
I’d imagine for something like Siri they’d argue it is too deeply embedded to be replaced and the rules would have exemptions for that. I think the rules applies more to superfluous apps on Windows and Android that you can’t remove like the Xbox app on Windows or having Facebook preinstalled on Android.

claydavisss 6y ago

Boo. The EU has had as much time as anyone to build a native digital economy. The web was born in Europe (TBL was working at a Euro science facility when he created it). Yet despite having an educated populace, wealth, infrastructure, and a bureaucracy that will favor homegrown tech, they are definitely behind North America and Asia and arguably behind India and even Africa. No one is asking the tough question - why can't the EU build?

cody3222 6y ago

Where's our comment from HN user "dang" to tell us all the related articles?

sveme 6y ago
You know that dang is employed by ycombinator to moderate hackernews?
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
dang often points to a previous discussion of the same article. As this BBC article was created four hours ago, that seems unlikely. If there are two discussions of the same event, dang sometimes adds a comment to the smaller discussion pointing to the larger one. If neither of those are true... what, exactly, do you want him to do?

easton 6y ago

The not allowing uninstallable apps part is interesting. Looking through their FAQ, they don't really seem to define what a "app" is. Could this not mean the entire OS should be replaceable with one that wasn't made by a "gatekeeper"? Because if say, Apple, allows you to remove Messages.app but keeps the Messages API private or locked behind an Apple-only entitlement, that isn't very useful, and the user should be able to load another OS at their discretion that lets them run whatever SMS client they want. Unless they want to require that all of the system services be able to be accessed by whatever app the user installs, which seems like a bigger kettle of fish.

dane-pgp 6y ago
> all of the system services be able to be accessed by whatever app the user installs It would be nice if they started by requiring that phone OSes add back the ability for apps to put the phone into / out of Airplane Mode. The API for that used to be available to unrooted Android phones, until version 4.2.2 came out which broke some apps[0]. A phone should be able to listen on Wi-Fi (or even FM) for a packet that indicates an incoming call, so that the rest of the time it can be disconnected from the cellular network and not reveal the user's approximate location. [0] https://apkpure.com/scheduled-airplane-mode-root/com.galaxy.scheduled_airplane_mode https://apkpure.com/scheduled-airplane-mode-root/com.galaxy....

fadsfsafadf123 6y ago

Sometimes I think GDPR was secretly pushed by Big Tech to make it harder for smaller business's to compete. It was basically useless. I wouldn't even be surprised if Google or Facebook helped write the legislation. Whatever noise EU is making now I have very little hope for. If the US government was so fearful that a fun video app made in China had the power of compromising National Security, stealing and spying on citizen's data, and even radicalizing people through their mobile Skinner Boxes and algo-driven Ludovico Technique pleasure therapy apps -------- you would think they would be doing WAY more, WAY faster.

buisi 6y ago
The GDPR is good in spirit as it forces a certain standard of privacy, but it is extremely vague (which means countries can effectively neuter it, or it could be over-enforced), and there is an extraterritorial component which set the precedent for global take-downs of content.
bloodorange 6y ago
"It was basically useless" Could you elaborate and perhaps point towards what makes you think this way? I ask because I have worked in a rather large corporation which had to implement massive changes to ensure they were being more respectful and careful towards user data. In my experience, the GDPR made them take it seriously which was otherwise ignored as it allowed them to profit off being negligent about these things. Also, it's a bit like food handling and storage related regulations for restaurants. While it might seem like a pain for the guy running the restaurant, it helps reduce the risk the consumers could otherwise face.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  GDPR only matters if the EU has jurisdiction. If it's a website run from China then GDPR can't really do anything. A better first step would've been to limit the information that's being sent out in the first place - the browsers and OS. If people had better control over what their computer sends out then the privacy issues would be much less worrying. After that you can talk about limitations on who can do what with the data. Just having the latter means that people are still leaking all of their data, but companies are basically just promising not to use it.

melenaboija 6y ago

I don't have much idea about regulations but I have the feeling that western countries reactions in this terms have been slow. I am not sure if this has been intentional to not slow the fast pace of the industry, they could just nod do it or they have not realized the impact of it. I think in some way the the almost immediate reaction to most of the regulatory problems that appeared during the COVID pandemic demonstrate that is possible to solve some of the bureaucratic barriers if needed. Not comparing the situations per se at but yes the practical resolutions.

ericra 6y ago

[Original Source Press Release](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_2347 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...) I found this bit promising: "Concretely, the Digital Markets Act will: - Prohibit a number of practices which are clearly unfair, such as blocking users from un-installing any pre-installed software or apps; " I'm curious about what other "clearly unfair" practices they are referring tho, but this alone could have implications for potentially getting rid of bundled applications on Android phones, as an example. This assumes that the clause extends to the Android operating system as it is installed on devices made by manufacturers possibly not regulated under these Acts.

Veedrac 6y ago
Bundling is explicitly allowed by the regulation. Some examples of other ‘clearly unfair’ practices are restricting the use of third-party software or stores, or preventing them from accessing them other than from the company's channels. The full proposal is here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/proposal-regulation-single-market-digital-services-digital-services-act_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/proposal-regulati...

dontTango 6y ago

And just like that, big tech becomes an oligarchy. That, or Europe becomes further disconnected to the rest of the world.

baxtr 6y ago

Ok, I will probably get downvoted for this. But I will still speak my mind: I am an EU citizen and I don’t think that’s the right approach because it’s distracting from what really happened: We missed the big Internet bus because we were so much focused on keeping things the way they were. Now we try to regulate us out. It makes me unbelievably sad. And it continues. The car was invented here but it takes an Australian visionary to push our car companies into the future. I am sure we will want to regulate Tesla soon too.

nickpp 6y ago
Another EU citizen here, resonating with your words. It seems that Europe has decided to stop evolving and just do anything to protect the status quo. All these regulations just trying to keep those damn disruptors at bay. Innovation is forbidden here. But hey! It’s for our own good.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >It seems that Europe has decided to stop evolving and just do anything to protect the status quo. Innovation is forbidden here. But hey! It’s for our own good. Yeah, this. Europe is an old continent that's mostly old money. The Europeans of today are rich mostly due to inherited wealth and former imperialism, not wealth they created themselves through innovation, with some families tracing their wealth back for centuries when land was cheap and plentiful and taxes were next to nothing that any hardworking person could buy land and build a business and while the wealth didn't go stratospheric, it still multiplied handsomely for their successors since "time in the market beats timing the market". If you look at Europe's biggest and wealthiest companies, most of them are several decades if not centuries old with some of their major shareholders still being old European nobility, in contrast to the US where the top tech companies are at most 30 years old, with older ones that fail to innovate always dying in a healthy cycle (IBM, Sun, Oracle, SGI, etc.), leaving room for new players(FAANG) to come on the market and eat the lunch of the dinosaurs. While in Europe, with so much of the pie taken by the old players, there's no more room for new players to spring up since the old established ones pulled the ladder up after them. The image of the typical wealthy successful German is not that of a hip 20-30 year old who built some cool business in his dorm room or his parents' garage like in the US, but of a 40 year old man with a Porsche who inherited his dad's machine shop and rolodex(typical owner of the famous Mittelstand that's always revered here on HN). All this old wealth is very risk adverse and feels threatened by disruptions and will fight tooth and nail to keep their status quo.

ericra 6y ago

This is interesting timing given the FTC announcement for data collection from social media companies in the US yesterday. I wonder if there is any connection here like some government cooperation happening behind the scenes. The two events have differences and apply to a slightly different set of companies, but they are both in the spirit of trying to control or better understand how big tech companies are operating (and especially, using customer data).

nbzso 6y ago

Another money grab from EU bureaucrats. Control the narrative in digital space, regulate small businesses, and get the position of Gatekeeper from big tech. It looks nice on paper.

TruthHurts44 6y ago
The money for huge clientele networks milking the EU funds in Eastern Europe and the money for propping up losing businesses and bloated social services in Western Europe have to come from somewhere.
- nbzso 6y ago
  It's simple. EU stops giving money to corrupt Eastern Europe criminals masked as a "politicians". The people there have not gained nothing. EU regulations are made to serve agendas of big members only.
maltelandwehr 6y ago
In the current system all the money flows to Google, Facebook, etc. and they evade EU taxes. So, yes. A money grab. One that is dearly needed for the EU!

breck 6y ago

> The idea is to prevent the firms gaining unfair advantages via their elevated positions. Anyone who is serious about this needs to stop attacking all the symptoms and address the root cause of Big Tech's monopoly power: Imaginary Property Laws ("IP"). Everything else is just tissues to sooth a runny nose instead of medicine to fight the virus. End IP and bring real competition and democratization to Big Tech.

buisi 6y ago

> The focus of the Digital Services Act is to create a single set of rules for the EU to keep users safe online, protect their freedom of expression and help both them and local authorities hold tech companies to account. You can either have freedom of expression or safety online. You can't have both. And the second might be an impossible goal regardless.

avianlyric 6y ago
The world isn't so black and white. Even in the US, the home of free speech, you can't post child pornogaphy online. You could easily put forward the argument then that freedom of expression doesn't exist in the US. Freedom of expression has never really meant you're completely free to say and anything (at least no in a civilized world). There are always going to be gray areas, but equally there are areas where expression should obviously be protected. An example would be, if Facebook decided to eradicate all homosexual content. Clearly the EU stepping in and saying you can't discriminate against gay speech is protecting the gay communities freedom of expression. Equally the EU stepping in and saying the Facebook isn't doing enough to protect victims of revenge porn is providing safety online. And is a reasonable balance between the rights of free expression from the poster vs the victim.
- buisi 6y ago
  Let us say the internet was created 50 years ago, and Facebook decided to eradicate all homosexual content. Perhaps, not even maliciously but as collateral damage for another goal. Would it have been as shocking or obviously bad?
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    The internet is not the only place the social changes happens. Equally the EU isn't applying the same regulation to every company, the most significant ones only apply to companies with 10% market share. It would be quite plausible for gay friendly social networks to spring up to fill that gap, and I would entirely expect it to happen. Apps like Grindr basically proves it would happen.

buisi 6y ago

It's weird how politicians never talk about regulating Visa and Mastercard. They too can pick and choose who they do business with (freedom of expression). There are a lot of middle-men with a lot of power who get ignored in favor of chasing the most popular target of the day.

Sargos 6y ago
> It's weird how politicians never talk about regulating Visa and Mastercard These are two of the most heavily regulated corporations in the world. I don't even understand the premise of your comment. Banking and money is extremely regulated and they have to ask for permission to do pretty much anything.
- buisi 6y ago
  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-are-trying-dictate-what-you-can-watch-pornhub https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar... Not the most sympathetic target, but it goes to show how much power they have. If they can do it against such a big target, can't they do it against anyone?

ANarrativeApe 6y ago

Watching this with great interest. The platform we are launching next year is focused on letting people vote the $40 trillion in shares they own through their collective investments. A core feature is the ability to support externally proposed company resolutions so that they trigger minority shareholder rights, creating a mechanism for getting the issues that matter to you onto the only corporate agenda that counts. We'll be operating 'Citizen Shareholder Assemblies' in which anyone will be able to participate. We're super aware of the need for open debate and free speech but at the same time we want arguments to be based on data. As Citizen Shareholders are able to follow the voting pattern of Default Advisors, we are particularly keen on preventing the 'obtaining of votes by deception'. You'd think there would be lot's of best practice we could follow from the wonderful world of politics, but it turns out that isn't a thing in the 'real world'. If we achieve our ambitions in a few years we will have 10% of the EU population, and even more in the US (103.7 million US citizens own shares through collective investments). Rather than waiting for problems to arise we are looking to get ahead of this curve. We have a number of things going for us, 1. we are not reliant on advertising revenues 2. we will know who everyone is (free speech doesn't have to equal anonymous speech) and 3. we have so many examples of how not to do this. We ;ook forward to the constructive criticism we will undoubtedly get from groups like hacker news. Any upfront thoughts would be much appreciated.

didibus 6y ago

Ok, most of those do seem reasonable to me. That said, I still wonder where all this motivation comes from? Have we really shown that big tech is harmful? And exactly to what kind of harm? And how we know alternatives arn't more harmful?

nalekberov 6y ago

And how they are going to prevent millions of websites from using Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel etc. in their websites?

nilshauk 6y ago

As a European citizen I’m hopeful for this regulation. The tech giants would rather police themselves, but they should be subject to oversight to ensure that they don’t abuse their market power. If this goes well I hope to see more competition and more innovation. I don’t believe that this will send Europe into some digital dark age, if anything it will make it easier for small to medium businesses to compete and innovate.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

danielfoster 6y ago

> Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based. The article goes on to give an example of how Amsterdam could use the law to request earnings data for local hosts from Airbnb. The way the BBC explains it, this law would give EU governments ready access to user data with no oversight. This represents a huge loss of privacy and freedom for EU residents.

dane-pgp 6y ago
Having Dutch law apply to the owners of Dutch property doesn't seem like a huge government overreach. If, however, the law ends up giving the Dutch government information about, for example, Estonian freelancers, then there would be reason to complain. The "smell test" for this will be whether the person whose data is accessed is allowed to be informed by the service provider when a government request comes in, and from which government, and why.
M2Ys4U 6y ago
These Regulations are explicitly without prejudice to data protection legislation, including the GDPR and LED. In other words, if there's a conflict between the GDPR and the DSM then the GDPR prevails.

g_p 6y ago

Articles 5 and 6 are the ones of most interest. A quick summary: - no preventing businesses from using other intermediaries (i.e. payment processors for app stores) - ensuring businesses can contract with users outside the platform, and then fulfil the contract via the platform (i.e. selling an app directly, but delivering via a store/platform) - not use data gained as a platform operator to compete with the businesses on the platform giving that data And the big one: - "allow the installation and effective use of third party software applications or software application stores [...] to be accessed by means other than the core platform services of that gatekeeper"

pgt 6y ago

Rules should apply symmetrically to any Big State body that makes them, such as the European Union.

0xfaded 6y ago

One consequence is that this will continue to keep European tech valuations low. Silicon valley startup valuations allow some crazy and amazing ideas to be tried, but it's all based a premise that startups may one day become a unicorns. This also supports Silicon Valley level wages, which are almost non existent in Europe. Now not only has the EU declared unicorns unwelcome, but also European users will be discounted, and perhaps even become a liability, if an EU startup seeks an exit to a US buyer. That's a huge problem since all major EU exits are sales to US buyers. It's pretty clear the Silicon valley innovation model didn't work for Europe. But Europe still needs to figure out how to get money circulating back into productive capital. Negative interest rates mean you can park your money in real estate and ride the stagflation. The current model seems to be for the government to fund all R&D, but please trust me as someone who spends way too much time writing grant applications that this model sucks.

imiric 6y ago
As a consumer I can't see that as anything but positive. Most SV unicorns are overvalued and their technology is not nearly as important to the world as they think it is. Once they reach a certain scale it can easily do more harm than good. The endless pursuit to "disrupt" and grow to please shareholders is the wrong dangling carrot for entrepreneurs. It only promotes "growth hacking" and other shady get-rich-quick schemes. I'm not a fan of more government oversight, but it's a good thing if it can control some of these tech giants.
- 0xfaded 6y ago
  As a consumer I also believe something that needs to be done to regulate big tech, but the problem of directing money into productive capital is huge. Every unicorn's valuation is basically realized by establishing some sort of monopoly or monopsony. This leads to another less-than-ideal situation, where companies are incentivized to spend money protecting their monopoly instead of innovating. Fundamentally this is bad. But it turns out that the capital cost of new technology is extremely high, and it becomes a corollary that anyone who wants to spend their lives developing the next technology should locate themselves in the most favorable funding environment. Europe can avoid being a tech backwater if it can figure out how to provide a favorable funding environment. One technocratic solution would be to make it the governments problem to reap reasonable returns from tech. Offering every citizen the option of purchasing up to 100.000 euros in tech bonds yielding 5% that EU governments become responsible for investing would unleash trillions of euros while exerting significant pressure on unproductive assets.

newsgourmet 6y ago

What if they made the same rules about news outlets, would people also cheer them on?

easytiger 6y ago

Regulate or shake down? It's a proxy war against Irish tax independence. Tax harmonisation and geo revenue targeting are the goal.

siljon 6y ago

As a European citizen I find it amazing that there are so many people in here saying there is no cities in EU that can compare with Silicon Valley. A growing city that creates reliable technology in Europe is Stockholm [1]. Which apparently is the second city after Silicon valley producing unicorn companies per capita in the world. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-stockholm-becoming-silicon-valley-europe-jose-berengueres-1d https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-stockholm-becoming-silico...

def_true_false 6y ago
Since when is Klarna considered reliable? Last I checked they couldn't even produce a working checkout UI.