📚 Europe Triples Down on Tough Rules for Tech

The European Union Tuesday unveiled sweeping new proposals to control tech industry giants as "gatekeepers" who could be fined up to 10% of their revenue for breaking EU rules on competition. From a report: In the EU, "proposals," once introduced, are likely to become law in some form, even if details change dramatically through a slow feedback process. The EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) would set standards for treating large online platforms as "gatekeepers," based chiefly on how many users they have. Gatekeepers would be barred from favoring their own products over those of rivals -- think Google steering users to its own restaurant reviews over Yelp's, for instance -- or from using data in an exclusionary way that they've collected to develop their own products. They'd either have to avoid using such data or make it available to competitors to tap as well. Gatekeepers that break the rules could be subject to fines as high as 10% of annual global revenue. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is aimed at making big platforms more accountable for user posts that break EU member nations' laws around illicit materials, such as Germany's prohibition on speech that glorifies Nazism. Large platforms that don't remove illegal posts following a government order could face fines of up to 6% of annual revenue.

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