Haven’t seen any posts about this and it’s a pretty big thing. From DMA website:
Examples of the “do’s”: gatekeepers will for example have to:
- allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations;
- provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper;
- allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform.
Example of the “don’ts”: gatekeepers will for example no longer:
- treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper’s platform;
- prevent users from un-installing any pre-installed software or app if they wish so;
- track end users outside of the gatekeepers’ core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted.
We’ll see how this plays out but this is first move in a very long time that could open up platform like WhatsApp to 3rd party clients and force Google and Apple to open their mobile OSes to other apps. Maybe we’ll see stock Android without play services? One can dream…
P.S. https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu - page about the legislation
Spoke to some EU lawyers recently at a policy meetup and this is pretty consistent with their prevailing sensibilities: target and dilute power that is being held over consumers.
I need to move to the EU…
Take me with you? I’m not much for looks but I cook well
Shit’s great here
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The package of laws will also pave the way for more competition in some of the areas most guarded by the tech firms, including Apple Wallet and Google Pay.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is the second big package of EU laws to hit tech firms in two months and defines a series of obligations that gatekeepers need to comply with, including not participating in anti-competitive practices.
The DMA aims to undo the gatekeeper or controlling position that large tech companies have commanded in the last 10 years and gives the European Commission the power to conduct market investigations and design remedies if the firms fall out of line.
Brussels intends the laws to open the door to more competition, allowing startups to compete with the giants on a level playing field for the first time.
The tech companies – including Apple, Google and Amazon – have six months to comply with a full list of dos and don’ts under the new laws, after which they could be fined up to 10% of their turnover.
The laws will initially apply to six companies: Alphabet (which owns Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (the owner of TikTok), Meta (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) and Microsoft.
The original article contains 575 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Not the first time I see it on Lemmy but I’m really glad it’s getting traction. I expect a lot from the DMA
I hope it spreads and influences other countries. Despite what people think about EU’s regulations, I do think they care more for their citizens than many governments.
Side loading AND USBC on the iPhone? Almost makes it a good phone
I mean what’s left compared to the average android phone?
A LOT, but side loading is definitely a good start.
Great! Does that mean that we will be able to message people via WhatsApp without needing to have it installed? (Via some kind of api)
Yes, that’s the goal, there was a great blog post from one of the KDE guys about a meeting people from the Neochat, Matrix and XMPP projects where invited to to explain the benefits of interoperability between chat apps and that part actually made it into the law now!
Shit, sometimes I just love EU.
With a focus on “sometimes” but yea, it’s certainly better than most in many cases!
Yeah their headlines are always great or terrible. “EU requires iPhones to use usb c” “eu is trying to ban encryption” “eu requires devices to have repairable batteries”
I think this is a possibility.
Hopefully it works out better then the GDPR, which was good in theory, but created a whole set of new issues in practice.
GDPR is fantastic and a big win for the consumer. It was so successful in fact, that it started to spread and other countries created similar laws.
It’s good, but that cookie banner is just bad… Though it’s not clear to me if it’s bad and not following the regulation or bad and following the regulation. It’s definitely not following the spirit as so many of those cookie banners are deep messes of hierarchical settings which any sane person would not waste time on…
Legal cookie banners need to make consent as easy as nonconsent.
So, if “Accept All” is a button, “Deny All” also needs to be a button.
Also, you cannot refuse service to someone who refuses Cookies, unless they’re necessary to the functioning of the service.Without these principles, it wouldn’t be consent. You can’t force someone to give consent.
You also do not need a Cookie banner, if:
- you don’t track personal data. (GDPR literally does not apply.)
- you only track personal data obviously required for the provided service, like a login cookie or a shopping cart cookie. (Implied Consent)
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The GDPR is one of the most important laws the EU ever created and the issues you talk about are probably cookie banners, that’s such a increadably tiny issue in a small part of a huge and hugely important law that this comment is nothing but fucking silly!
Sounds too good to be true. Why is the EU so concerned about privacy when most individual countries dont care.
Because they can use the EU to set these standards more broadly?
Why write laws for your country specifically when the governing body a step higher is known to already be working on something very similar?
Individual countries do care. Germany has pretty comprehensive privacy laws already. And it is not only about privacy, it is also about power and regulation.
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Not really a question, more of a statement. The U.S., China, even UK, and probably more have incredibly poor privacy laws, and keep aiming to strip even more privacy away. I’m just curious whats different about the EU that makes them do something actually good for people.
Ah, I misunderstood what you meant by “individual countries”; I thought you meant the individual countries that make up the EU as if these were somehow in opposition to the EU. That’s a common misconception even within the EU itself; just look at the Brexit people. But yeah, I see what you mean. I think it’s a cultural thing. We like regulating potentially powerful things to prevent them from getting out of hand. We have something of a history with powerful things getting out of hand.
Sometimes things are done out of the goodness of people’s hearts, which makes sense when policies are brought up by some individuals, but also opposed by others. Ultimately they usually land, maybe for the lesser power the big tech corporations hold over the EU, but also for an egoistical desire to safeguard one’s own privacy that everyone has to some extent, especially people in power
Because all those Tech Giants are American or Chinese. EU is lagging behind US on innovation so now they want to make Tech Giants jobs more difficult in hopes that this will create some openings for EU tech firms. They don’t really care about you’re privacy that much, they just want it make more difficult for Google and Facebook to siphon money out of EU. It’s still great for us, don’t get me wrong.
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And at least QAnon levdl stupid!!!
