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EU lawmakers pass strict new rules affecting big U.S. tech

98 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago
These are the main points of the draft law. Lawmakers voted to approve measures in the draft Digital Markets Act that could mean: A company’s messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that’s where their friends are A ban on behavioral targeting of ads to minors Fines of as much as 20% of a company’s global annual sales for breaches for the law Companies identified as “gatekeepers” and therefore set to be accountable under the DMA include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Booking.com, and could later hit online marketplaces Zalando and Alibaba. -
- politician 5y ago
  > A company’s messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that’s where their friends are. The EU is doing the real work to make the metaverse happen.
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  > A company’s messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that’s where their friends are Am I wrong or is this revolutionary?
  - nathanaldensr 5y ago
    Well, it would be if there's actual enforcement. But if GDPR is anything to go by, it'll just be words on a page.
    - ginko 5y ago
      https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
      - nathanaldensr 5y ago
        Nice! Thanks for this. Now I can turn my feeling into a reasoned argument. :)
        bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        given that the site linked showed a number of cases of enforcement - how?
        emptysongglass 5y ago
        Because they're very few and for pocket change that barely amounts to a wrist slap. Until you've been in the position of filing a GDPR complaint yourself it's easy to imagine that GDPR enforcement is effective. That couldn't be further from the truth. Compliance officers (yes the people you're supposed to complain to) will do everything in their power to invalidate your claim and will then drag your complaint through enough Kafkaesque bureaucracy to make you throw your hands up in defeat. I can only speak from my own experience but go ahead and filter by my own nation's (Denmark) successful fines of businesses. That list is paltry and full of fines that each amount to less than two months pay in most cases of a single employee.
        mhitza 5y ago
        I got the same impression while skimming over a bunch of meagerly fines of a couple thousand euros. But then I saw the graphs https://www.enforcementtracker.com/?insights https://www.enforcementtracker.com/?insights which might inspire most trust. Maybe DPAs are slowly learning and improving their process? I know that I tried to file a complaint in Romania back in 2019 and it was a huge hassle to do, with a large form with all types of info I didn't have easy access too (like the onus was on me to provide company information, contact details, etc). Whereas when I checked out the complaint form this year it only included a few fields, that made sense.
        bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        In the case of Denmark more than half of those were governmental, which generally have less skin in the GDPR game, and out of those left only two of them made me think wow I bet those guys have enough money that these fines won't be more than an irritant and one of them was a non-profit. Aside from all that if I was one of the people handing out fines my thinking would be like this, first I would ramp up so start giving smaller fines, and then when people I was fining were not changing their behavior I would keep increasing the fines. If for example someone gave Arp Hansen Hotel Group A/S a significant percentage of its revenue as a fine the first time people would be up in arms and complain a lot, so then I give them a slap on the wrist of 147,800 euros - which in the average Dane's view would sound like a lot - and ramp up the next time to maybe 220000, then the next 400000 - and then if they keep on give them a million. At that point no matter what PR campaign is done to make them seem the victim it will be a hard sell, they were warned fined multiple small fines and never fixed up their act. Who can blame us? At the same time I would also want to keep my view to what people were giving national and international bad actors in other countries, I would want my actions to look reasonable in relation to those. Speaking of which I saw Ireland: Fine against WhatsApp Ireland Ltd in the amount of EUR 225 million The Irish DPA (DPC) has fined WhatsApp Ireland Ltd. EUR 225 million for breaches of the GDPR in relation to the provision of information and the transparency of that information to users and non-users of WhatsApp. And Luxembourg: Fine against Amazon Europe Core S.a r.l. in the amount of EUR 746,000,000 In its quarterly report, Amazon.com Inc. announced that the DPA from Luxembourg (CNPD) had fined Amazon Europe Core S.a r.l. EUR 746,000,000 for failing to process personal data in compliance with the GDPR. These are also relative slaps on the wrist, but of course the problem for these companies with these fines is that just one fine might be a slap but 20 or so and you might start to get a welt on that wrist. at any rate - I would not expect anyone to issue a fine of of 4% of annual global turnover – whichever is greater - the first two or three fines that are given out to any company - unless Facebook has some leak that shows them spelling out their plan to break the law and do what they want with EU citizen data because screw the EU! >full of fines that each amount to less than two months pay in most cases of a single employee. Aside from the municipalities / regions, I see two companies that had fines small enough to be possibly two months pay of a highly paid employee, the other ones sure maybe if we're talking at top management levels but that's sort of misleading. At any rate it's not two months of a janitor's wages - unless we're talking about the municipalities.
    - cotillion 5y ago
      When the words on the page are "Minimum level of fines of 4% and up to 20% of total turnover " it might be time to start to listen. And for systematic non-compliance “structural or behavioural remedies”.
  - 1cvmask 5y ago
    I agree. How do you draw the line. Does Slack have to integrate with Tinder or Whatsapp? And then there is the security issue of end-to-end encryption and the lowest common denominator. Basically the most insecure messaging app will be the attack vector. And there is no chance to have some form of security through obscurity if you are say a targeted journalist.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      > Does Slack have to integrate with Tinder or Whatsapp? Federation and bridge services are nothing new. Facebook's messenger used to allow XMPP clients years ago. Now that at least the big platforms actually are mandated to provide open access for interoperability, maybe we can see some innovation in that field again. The interesting thing will be stuff like feeds - how do you solve cross-platform activity feeds without creating massive privacy liabilities?
    - Shish2k 5y ago
      Reading the actual document, I don’t see anything about “interoperability” implying “federation” - it’s more like “third-party clients must be allowed to use the same APIs as first-party clients”
      - ISL 5y ago
        A third-party client that aggregates content from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Mastodon, strips all of the ads, and orders posts in the order desired by the user will, in aggregate, be a game-changer. Not being able to split-test reliably for all users will also have a huge impact for the walled gardens.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - tomjen3 5y ago
        That would be fantastic. The world needs pidgin 2.0 where all the services are aggregated and serve the user.
      - 5y ago
- herunan 5y ago
  Totally behind the interoperable thing, but where do you draw the line? Anything from dating apps to property buying apps have messaging in them.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    I think the plan is to do it similar to anti-competition laws: if your market share is large enough and/or your company is significant to society then you'll have to comply. If you're small then you'll get a pass.
  - np- 5y ago
    I am pretty sure this just means that messaging companies will need to provide a publicly accessible API. There won’t be any mandate to actually implement this interoperability beyond that, but of course someone could write an open source client that uses all these newly exposed APIs to make a unified chat app with Tinder, Slack, and WhatsApp all in one place. But the tech companies themselves aren’t being forced to work with each other, the ask from the tech company side is actually relatively small.
    - afiori 5y ago
      I would expect the opposite to be true: big companies might be forced to "try hard" to cooperate with each other, but have no obbligation to allow <random app developer> access to their internals in any way.
  - fmajid 5y ago
    The rules apply to significant platforms based on a market cap threshold. And not just American ones, Booking.com is European (Dutch). How they are going to deal with the practicalities of fighting spam remains to be seen.
  - tantalor 5y ago
    It only applies to "gatekeepers" > Companies identified as “gatekeepers” and therefore set to be accountable under the DMA include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Booking.com, and could later hit online marketplaces Zalando and Alibaba.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Vague sweeping rules combined with gigantic fines smells like taxation by another name.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    yeah cuz everything we did in past worked out so well
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      I don't get what this comment is trying to say. I agree that at some point it does start to feel like the EU is just souring the grapes they failed to grow themselves. Why not invest in homegrown alternatives that bring the changes they want to see? Trying to mandate interop is I'm sure a dream for the .0001% of users who've been clamoring to get back on Pidgin... But any meaningful amount of their revenue being fined for not providing that is ludicrous to me. It's just not withholding that kind of value from end users.
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        > Why not invest in homegrown alternatives that bring the changes they want to see? Because these user-hostile practices give the companies who employ them a competitive advantage, making it very difficult for better companies to compete.
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        I'm refuting that outright. Again, the vast majority of users will not take advantage of federation. If they had, Facebook wouldn't have been able to drop their XMPP support like it was nothing. Despite the wants of the technical minority, it does not provide nearly as much value as these ultra specialized protocols do. You see iPhone users declining to communicate with Android users over being forced to use the least common denominator. They would rather not talk to someone than give up HQ pictures they'll look at for 5 seconds and forget. Federation is a random stumbling block that at best will cement big players vs regulatory capture. It's not going to make competition easier. Having an SMS to your competitor's iMessage is not going to make your iMessage competitor easier to launch. - And on a larger scale, the EU lost because they moved too slowly, acting like abusive practices is why Google ate search, Apple innovated themselves into their own kingdom, etc. is ridiculous. Silicon Valley might slowly be losing its influence, and these companies do take actions that should be regulated (like targeted ads at minors) but Europe did not form its "Silicon Valley" fast enough. It fell behind in tech, and so now it stays behind in tech. The bad behavior is a sideshow compared to that. Anti-competitive behavior isn't why they can't compete, trying to battle the resources and talent these companies with nowhere near equivalent footing is why they can't compete.
- sbacic 5y ago
  > A company’s messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that’s where their friends are Does this mean what I think it means? That we can finally say goodbye to half a dozen different chat apps and just have one (like Pidgin in the good old days)?
  - gmueckl 5y ago
    Pidgin likely won't have a big comeback. The messaging service providers can still tie them to their own proprietary clients. They would only be forced to forward messages between their servers as I understand it. I'm not sure which messenger platforms even need to follow this requirement (e.g. is Signal big enough to have to open up?). Also, there's a few fun open questions like how to uphold end to end encryption or how to exclude spammy messaging services from the network.
    - officeplant 5y ago
      >how to uphold end to end encryption Considering how first world governments are fighting against encryption I assume this is just a benefit to them.
      - wdb 5y ago
        Ain't this a similar problem as the end-to-end encryption between NATO parties e.g. NATO navy ships communicating which each other?
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    It's likely that it means messaging apps from the same brand should be interoperable i.e. Messenger message should reach WhatsApp and vice-versa but it needn't reach Signal, Telegram. Fun fact, I had an interoperable network between leading chat apps Messenger <-> Telegram <-> Viber <-> LINE back in 2017 on top of which we ran a privacy focused dating platform[1]. It was built using bot APIs of these platforms. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs
- varispeed 5y ago
  > A ban on behavioral targeting of ads to minors That's interesting - if it is harmful to minors, how it isn't when someone turns 18? I believe it should be banned across the board.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    > if it is harmful to minors, how it isn't when someone turns 18? Same as for alcohol or tobacco, at some point society assumes you're mature enough to make your own decisions. Obviously it varies from individual to individual but we had to chose a date and in most countries it's between 16 and 21.
Vinnl 5y ago
Note: this sounds like it's law now, but that's not the case. I'm not an expert on EU legislation, but as I understand it, a commission (i.e. subset of the members) of the European Parliament (directly elected by EU citizens) voted on what they want their position to be when they, as representatives of the wider Parliament, negotiate with the European Council (leaders of the EU member state governments) on what the Digital Markets Act should end up looking like. Before that, however, the wider Parliament will also need to vote on that, which will happen half December. (And as for how the other big EU institution, the European Commission (which functions like the government, and has a representative of each member country chosen by that country's government), is involved, I think they were the one to originally propose the Digital Markets Act?) Source: general vague knowledge, and this tweet by a member of the negotiating commission: https://twitter.com/kimvsparrentak/status/1463083601868869632 https://twitter.com/kimvsparrentak/status/146308360186886963... Corrections welcome.
- M2Ys4U 5y ago
  The European Commission is the EU's executive body. The President of the European Commission (PotEC) is nominated by the European Council[0] and then elected by the directly-elected European Parliament. The Member States (other than the one from which the PotEC came) then nominate Commissioners who are assigned portfolios from the PotEC and are approved en-bloc by the European Parliament.[1] Commissioners aren't members of the European Parliament. You're right the DMA isn't law yet, it's only party-way through second step of the process, the Ordinary Legislative Procedure. The Ordinary legislative Procedure works something like this: 1. The Commission adopts a Proposal for a legislative act (i.e. a Directive or Regulation) 2. The European Parliament considers the proposal in committees (with a nominated lead committee), and then in plenary. This will almost certainly involve amending the text of the proposal. 3. If approved by the European Parliament, the proposal then moves to the Council of the European Union (not to be confused with the European Council, mentioned above, or the Council of Europe, which is not an EU body.[2]). This Council is made up of representatives (often ministers) from each of the member states, but not the heads of state and government. 4. If the Council has suggested amendments to the text then these can either be accepted by the European Parliament or a process known as "trialogue" happens, where there are negotiations between Parliament, Council and Commission. 5. Once the institutions have agreed on the final text, the act is published in the Official Journal of the European Union and becomes law. [0] The body comprising the heads of state and government of the EU's member states [1] But only after Parliament holds confirmation hearings. These can - and have - led to portfolios being re-assigned or to member states withdrawing their candidates and replacing them with somebody more acceptable to Parliament. [2] Somebody really needs to do something about these names as it's confusing AF. Although generally the Council of the European Union is referred to as just "the Council".
quotemstr 5y ago
I wonder what it'll take to get companies to just pull out of Europe entirely rather than comply with increasingly onerous demands.
- cortexio 5y ago
  i hope google/facebook and others leave europe. It would give room to newer/better companies. But ofc, they will never leave. Too much profit in europe.
- robotmay 5y ago
  It'd be interesting to see. At the moment Europe is largely dominated by the US tech industry (bar a few notable exceptions, like Spotify). One of them leaving would open a nice big gap for new/existing EU alternatives to compete in.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  You really think they'd pull out and allow someone willing to play by a couple of rules to grow to be big enough to threaten the rest of their space? Giving up China is one thing. Yeah, it has a billion people but it's also a giant pain in the ass given the sheer amount of meddling that country's government involves itself with. But Europe? None of these companies can maintain the sort of quasi-monopolies they have without Europe.
- an9n 5y ago
  Me too - let's figure it out and make it happen!
- thunkshift1 5y ago
  My 2c - big companies pulling out of Europe would be a welcome opportunity and not a crisis for eu
  - machiaweliczny 5y ago
    In PL we have/had alternative for every big Co. Even Apple alternative that got killed by Siemens. And it's 40M country. I would love some space and capital here.
nodamage 5y ago
Are these the same lawmakers that want to ban encryption and backdoor every secure messaging app?
- hobbes78 5y ago
  Maybe this is a way to achieve that? "So, for the different apps to be interoperable, no encryption is allowed" Again, I would prefer the market to sort it out without interference from politicians.
- Vinnl 5y ago
  Given the size of the EU, I'm pretty sure it's not.
jmpman 5y ago
So, could Apple just bifurcate their iMessage platform into an EU version and a rest of the world version, and then let the interoperability be only on the EU version? Basically downgrade the EU version to be equal to SMS. If there no longer a competitive advantage in having a differentiated platform in the EU, then let others spend the resources on that service.
- SonicTheSith 5y ago
  Apple could ignore doing that to iMessage simce nobody uses it in Europe, Whatsapp, telegram, signal and facebook messenger have about 95% of the messeging market in europe. Add Line, Kakaotalk and wechat and you got 90%< of world wide mobile communications excluding the US.
  - leadingthenet 5y ago
    > Apple could ignore doing that to iMessage simce nobody uses it in Europe I use it.

98 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

These are the main points of the draft law. Lawmakers voted to approve measures in the draft Digital Markets Act that could mean: A company’s messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that’s where their friends are A ban on behavioral targeting of ads to minors Fines of as much as 20% of a company’s global annual sales for breaches for the law Companies identified as “gatekeepers” and therefore set to be accountable under the DMA include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Booking.com, and could later hit online marketplaces Zalando and Alibaba. -

politician 5y ago
> A company’s messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that’s where their friends are. The EU is doing the real work to make the metaverse happen.
yodsanklai 5y ago
> A company’s messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that’s where their friends are Am I wrong or is this revolutionary?
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  Well, it would be if there's actual enforcement. But if GDPR is anything to go by, it'll just be words on a page.
  - ginko 5y ago
    https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
    - nathanaldensr 5y ago
      Nice! Thanks for this. Now I can turn my feeling into a reasoned argument. :)
      - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        given that the site linked showed a number of cases of enforcement - how?
        emptysongglass 5y ago
        Because they're very few and for pocket change that barely amounts to a wrist slap. Until you've been in the position of filing a GDPR complaint yourself it's easy to imagine that GDPR enforcement is effective. That couldn't be further from the truth. Compliance officers (yes the people you're supposed to complain to) will do everything in their power to invalidate your claim and will then drag your complaint through enough Kafkaesque bureaucracy to make you throw your hands up in defeat. I can only speak from my own experience but go ahead and filter by my own nation's (Denmark) successful fines of businesses. That list is paltry and full of fines that each amount to less than two months pay in most cases of a single employee.
        mhitza 5y ago
        I got the same impression while skimming over a bunch of meagerly fines of a couple thousand euros. But then I saw the graphs https://www.enforcementtracker.com/?insights https://www.enforcementtracker.com/?insights which might inspire most trust. Maybe DPAs are slowly learning and improving their process? I know that I tried to file a complaint in Romania back in 2019 and it was a huge hassle to do, with a large form with all types of info I didn't have easy access too (like the onus was on me to provide company information, contact details, etc). Whereas when I checked out the complaint form this year it only included a few fields, that made sense.
        bryanrasmussen 5y ago
        In the case of Denmark more than half of those were governmental, which generally have less skin in the GDPR game, and out of those left only two of them made me think wow I bet those guys have enough money that these fines won't be more than an irritant and one of them was a non-profit. Aside from all that if I was one of the people handing out fines my thinking would be like this, first I would ramp up so start giving smaller fines, and then when people I was fining were not changing their behavior I would keep increasing the fines. If for example someone gave Arp Hansen Hotel Group A/S a significant percentage of its revenue as a fine the first time people would be up in arms and complain a lot, so then I give them a slap on the wrist of 147,800 euros - which in the average Dane's view would sound like a lot - and ramp up the next time to maybe 220000, then the next 400000 - and then if they keep on give them a million. At that point no matter what PR campaign is done to make them seem the victim it will be a hard sell, they were warned fined multiple small fines and never fixed up their act. Who can blame us? At the same time I would also want to keep my view to what people were giving national and international bad actors in other countries, I would want my actions to look reasonable in relation to those. Speaking of which I saw Ireland: Fine against WhatsApp Ireland Ltd in the amount of EUR 225 million The Irish DPA (DPC) has fined WhatsApp Ireland Ltd. EUR 225 million for breaches of the GDPR in relation to the provision of information and the transparency of that information to users and non-users of WhatsApp. And Luxembourg: Fine against Amazon Europe Core S.a r.l. in the amount of EUR 746,000,000 In its quarterly report, Amazon.com Inc. announced that the DPA from Luxembourg (CNPD) had fined Amazon Europe Core S.a r.l. EUR 746,000,000 for failing to process personal data in compliance with the GDPR. These are also relative slaps on the wrist, but of course the problem for these companies with these fines is that just one fine might be a slap but 20 or so and you might start to get a welt on that wrist. at any rate - I would not expect anyone to issue a fine of of 4% of annual global turnover – whichever is greater - the first two or three fines that are given out to any company - unless Facebook has some leak that shows them spelling out their plan to break the law and do what they want with EU citizen data because screw the EU! >full of fines that each amount to less than two months pay in most cases of a single employee. Aside from the municipalities / regions, I see two companies that had fines small enough to be possibly two months pay of a highly paid employee, the other ones sure maybe if we're talking at top management levels but that's sort of misleading. At any rate it's not two months of a janitor's wages - unless we're talking about the municipalities.
  - cotillion 5y ago
    When the words on the page are "Minimum level of fines of 4% and up to 20% of total turnover " it might be time to start to listen. And for systematic non-compliance “structural or behavioural remedies”.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  I agree. How do you draw the line. Does Slack have to integrate with Tinder or Whatsapp? And then there is the security issue of end-to-end encryption and the lowest common denominator. Basically the most insecure messaging app will be the attack vector. And there is no chance to have some form of security through obscurity if you are say a targeted journalist.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > Does Slack have to integrate with Tinder or Whatsapp? Federation and bridge services are nothing new. Facebook's messenger used to allow XMPP clients years ago. Now that at least the big platforms actually are mandated to provide open access for interoperability, maybe we can see some innovation in that field again. The interesting thing will be stuff like feeds - how do you solve cross-platform activity feeds without creating massive privacy liabilities?
  - Shish2k 5y ago
    Reading the actual document, I don’t see anything about “interoperability” implying “federation” - it’s more like “third-party clients must be allowed to use the same APIs as first-party clients”
    - ISL 5y ago
      A third-party client that aggregates content from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Mastodon, strips all of the ads, and orders posts in the order desired by the user will, in aggregate, be a game-changer. Not being able to split-test reliably for all users will also have a huge impact for the walled gardens.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - tomjen3 5y ago
      That would be fantastic. The world needs pidgin 2.0 where all the services are aggregated and serve the user.
    - 5y ago
herunan 5y ago
Totally behind the interoperable thing, but where do you draw the line? Anything from dating apps to property buying apps have messaging in them.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  I think the plan is to do it similar to anti-competition laws: if your market share is large enough and/or your company is significant to society then you'll have to comply. If you're small then you'll get a pass.
- np- 5y ago
  I am pretty sure this just means that messaging companies will need to provide a publicly accessible API. There won’t be any mandate to actually implement this interoperability beyond that, but of course someone could write an open source client that uses all these newly exposed APIs to make a unified chat app with Tinder, Slack, and WhatsApp all in one place. But the tech companies themselves aren’t being forced to work with each other, the ask from the tech company side is actually relatively small.
  - afiori 5y ago
    I would expect the opposite to be true: big companies might be forced to "try hard" to cooperate with each other, but have no obbligation to allow <random app developer> access to their internals in any way.
- fmajid 5y ago
  The rules apply to significant platforms based on a market cap threshold. And not just American ones, Booking.com is European (Dutch). How they are going to deal with the practicalities of fighting spam remains to be seen.
- tantalor 5y ago
  It only applies to "gatekeepers" > Companies identified as “gatekeepers” and therefore set to be accountable under the DMA include Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Booking.com, and could later hit online marketplaces Zalando and Alibaba.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Vague sweeping rules combined with gigantic fines smells like taxation by another name.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  yeah cuz everything we did in past worked out so well
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    I don't get what this comment is trying to say. I agree that at some point it does start to feel like the EU is just souring the grapes they failed to grow themselves. Why not invest in homegrown alternatives that bring the changes they want to see? Trying to mandate interop is I'm sure a dream for the .0001% of users who've been clamoring to get back on Pidgin... But any meaningful amount of their revenue being fined for not providing that is ludicrous to me. It's just not withholding that kind of value from end users.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      > Why not invest in homegrown alternatives that bring the changes they want to see? Because these user-hostile practices give the companies who employ them a competitive advantage, making it very difficult for better companies to compete.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        I'm refuting that outright. Again, the vast majority of users will not take advantage of federation. If they had, Facebook wouldn't have been able to drop their XMPP support like it was nothing. Despite the wants of the technical minority, it does not provide nearly as much value as these ultra specialized protocols do. You see iPhone users declining to communicate with Android users over being forced to use the least common denominator. They would rather not talk to someone than give up HQ pictures they'll look at for 5 seconds and forget. Federation is a random stumbling block that at best will cement big players vs regulatory capture. It's not going to make competition easier. Having an SMS to your competitor's iMessage is not going to make your iMessage competitor easier to launch. - And on a larger scale, the EU lost because they moved too slowly, acting like abusive practices is why Google ate search, Apple innovated themselves into their own kingdom, etc. is ridiculous. Silicon Valley might slowly be losing its influence, and these companies do take actions that should be regulated (like targeted ads at minors) but Europe did not form its "Silicon Valley" fast enough. It fell behind in tech, and so now it stays behind in tech. The bad behavior is a sideshow compared to that. Anti-competitive behavior isn't why they can't compete, trying to battle the resources and talent these companies with nowhere near equivalent footing is why they can't compete.
sbacic 5y ago
> A company’s messaging or social media app is interoperable, to prevent users feeling forced to use one or the other because that’s where their friends are Does this mean what I think it means? That we can finally say goodbye to half a dozen different chat apps and just have one (like Pidgin in the good old days)?
- gmueckl 5y ago
  Pidgin likely won't have a big comeback. The messaging service providers can still tie them to their own proprietary clients. They would only be forced to forward messages between their servers as I understand it. I'm not sure which messenger platforms even need to follow this requirement (e.g. is Signal big enough to have to open up?). Also, there's a few fun open questions like how to uphold end to end encryption or how to exclude spammy messaging services from the network.
  - officeplant 5y ago
    >how to uphold end to end encryption Considering how first world governments are fighting against encryption I assume this is just a benefit to them.
    - wdb 5y ago
      Ain't this a similar problem as the end-to-end encryption between NATO parties e.g. NATO navy ships communicating which each other?
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  It's likely that it means messaging apps from the same brand should be interoperable i.e. Messenger message should reach WhatsApp and vice-versa but it needn't reach Signal, Telegram. Fun fact, I had an interoperable network between leading chat apps Messenger <-> Telegram <-> Viber <-> LINE back in 2017 on top of which we ran a privacy focused dating platform[1]. It was built using bot APIs of these platforms. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs
varispeed 5y ago
> A ban on behavioral targeting of ads to minors That's interesting - if it is harmful to minors, how it isn't when someone turns 18? I believe it should be banned across the board.
- lm28469 5y ago
  > if it is harmful to minors, how it isn't when someone turns 18? Same as for alcohol or tobacco, at some point society assumes you're mature enough to make your own decisions. Obviously it varies from individual to individual but we had to chose a date and in most countries it's between 16 and 21.

Vinnl 5y ago

Note: this sounds like it's law now, but that's not the case. I'm not an expert on EU legislation, but as I understand it, a commission (i.e. subset of the members) of the European Parliament (directly elected by EU citizens) voted on what they want their position to be when they, as representatives of the wider Parliament, negotiate with the European Council (leaders of the EU member state governments) on what the Digital Markets Act should end up looking like. Before that, however, the wider Parliament will also need to vote on that, which will happen half December. (And as for how the other big EU institution, the European Commission (which functions like the government, and has a representative of each member country chosen by that country's government), is involved, I think they were the one to originally propose the Digital Markets Act?) Source: general vague knowledge, and this tweet by a member of the negotiating commission: https://twitter.com/kimvsparrentak/status/1463083601868869632 https://twitter.com/kimvsparrentak/status/146308360186886963... Corrections welcome.

M2Ys4U 5y ago
The European Commission is the EU's executive body. The President of the European Commission (PotEC) is nominated by the European Council[0] and then elected by the directly-elected European Parliament. The Member States (other than the one from which the PotEC came) then nominate Commissioners who are assigned portfolios from the PotEC and are approved en-bloc by the European Parliament.[1] Commissioners aren't members of the European Parliament. You're right the DMA isn't law yet, it's only party-way through second step of the process, the Ordinary Legislative Procedure. The Ordinary legislative Procedure works something like this: 1. The Commission adopts a Proposal for a legislative act (i.e. a Directive or Regulation) 2. The European Parliament considers the proposal in committees (with a nominated lead committee), and then in plenary. This will almost certainly involve amending the text of the proposal. 3. If approved by the European Parliament, the proposal then moves to the Council of the European Union (not to be confused with the European Council, mentioned above, or the Council of Europe, which is not an EU body.[2]). This Council is made up of representatives (often ministers) from each of the member states, but not the heads of state and government. 4. If the Council has suggested amendments to the text then these can either be accepted by the European Parliament or a process known as "trialogue" happens, where there are negotiations between Parliament, Council and Commission. 5. Once the institutions have agreed on the final text, the act is published in the Official Journal of the European Union and becomes law. [0] The body comprising the heads of state and government of the EU's member states [1] But only after Parliament holds confirmation hearings. These can - and have - led to portfolios being re-assigned or to member states withdrawing their candidates and replacing them with somebody more acceptable to Parliament. [2] Somebody really needs to do something about these names as it's confusing AF. Although generally the Council of the European Union is referred to as just "the Council".

quotemstr 5y ago

I wonder what it'll take to get companies to just pull out of Europe entirely rather than comply with increasingly onerous demands.

cortexio 5y ago
i hope google/facebook and others leave europe. It would give room to newer/better companies. But ofc, they will never leave. Too much profit in europe.
robotmay 5y ago
It'd be interesting to see. At the moment Europe is largely dominated by the US tech industry (bar a few notable exceptions, like Spotify). One of them leaving would open a nice big gap for new/existing EU alternatives to compete in.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
You really think they'd pull out and allow someone willing to play by a couple of rules to grow to be big enough to threaten the rest of their space? Giving up China is one thing. Yeah, it has a billion people but it's also a giant pain in the ass given the sheer amount of meddling that country's government involves itself with. But Europe? None of these companies can maintain the sort of quasi-monopolies they have without Europe.
an9n 5y ago
Me too - let's figure it out and make it happen!
thunkshift1 5y ago
My 2c - big companies pulling out of Europe would be a welcome opportunity and not a crisis for eu
- machiaweliczny 5y ago
  In PL we have/had alternative for every big Co. Even Apple alternative that got killed by Siemens. And it's 40M country. I would love some space and capital here.

nodamage 5y ago

Are these the same lawmakers that want to ban encryption and backdoor every secure messaging app?

hobbes78 5y ago
Maybe this is a way to achieve that? "So, for the different apps to be interoperable, no encryption is allowed" Again, I would prefer the market to sort it out without interference from politicians.
Vinnl 5y ago
Given the size of the EU, I'm pretty sure it's not.

jmpman 5y ago

So, could Apple just bifurcate their iMessage platform into an EU version and a rest of the world version, and then let the interoperability be only on the EU version? Basically downgrade the EU version to be equal to SMS. If there no longer a competitive advantage in having a differentiated platform in the EU, then let others spend the resources on that service.

SonicTheSith 5y ago
Apple could ignore doing that to iMessage simce nobody uses it in Europe, Whatsapp, telegram, signal and facebook messenger have about 95% of the messeging market in europe. Add Line, Kakaotalk and wechat and you got 90%< of world wide mobile communications excluding the US.
- leadingthenet 5y ago
  > Apple could ignore doing that to iMessage simce nobody uses it in Europe I use it.