Amazon, Meta and four other tech giants will have to comply with stricter rules in the EU in the future. The EU Commission would like to limit the market power of these companies and on Wednesday in Brussels classified them as “gatekeepers”, who are an important gateway to the end consumer for commercial users. In addition to Amazon and Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram), these now also include Google’s parent company Alphabet, Apple, ByteDance (Tiktok), and Microsoft. A number of prohibitions and requirements apply to gatekeepers in the EU. Companies now have six months to implement the regulations.
According to the Commission, one of the rules they have to comply with is that large companies can only merge data from different sources with the express user consent.
In the future, large messenger services such as WhatsApp and iMessage will also have to open up to receiving messages from smaller messengers. For group chats, this should only come over the coming years. Violations can result in heavy fines, and in exceptional cases even splitting up.
The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) aims to limit the market power of internet giants, ensure fairer competition and give consumers more freedom of choice when it comes to online offers. Companies fall under the DMA if they have annual sales of at least €7.5 billion or an average market capitalization of at least €75 billion. In addition, they must operate a so-called central platform service with at least 45 million active users in the EU and 10,000 active business users per month.
Almost ten days ago, the stricter rules for particularly large platforms under the sister law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), came into force. This stipulates that companies, for example, must remove child pornography or terror propaganda more quickly than before. In turn, it will be easier for users to report such content. Online marketplaces like Amazon are now obliged to remove counterfeit products or dangerous toys as much as possible and to warn shoppers. (dpa)