EU unveils ‘revolutionary’ laws to curb big tech firms’ power - The Guardian
theguardian.com
- New regulations will target six major tech companies to improve consumer experience and data privacy. These include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft.
- Pre-installed apps like weather and email that are difficult to delete will be disallowed, aiming to promote interoperability and reduce "gatekeeping" activities.
- Companies will be prohibited from monetizing user data collected from phone apps for advertising purposes.
- The regulations will encourage competition by allowing alternative payment systems, benefiting startups and consumers.
- The European Commission aims to empower consumers and ensure tech giants adhere to European rules, providing immediate accountability for any issues.
Once more, the EU being leader when it comes to users' rights and keeping the big companies accountable for their shady practices. 👍
Sometimes i wish i lived there :')
As a Canadian, I appreciate a lot of what the EU does when it comes to consumer protections. Hopefully this one also ends up impacting the rest of us!
Same, my American brother, same. (I'm from Chile btw) 🇨🇱✌️
Excellent use of the word, my friend.
I plan on moving there as soon as possible when I graduate high school. Real tired of America
Come to Ireland, the weather is mostly shite but global failures on climate change are making it very Mediterranean
Ireland is probably is a nice country to live in, but it's pretty ironic recommending it to someone wanting to come to the EU because of its regulations on big companies.
Ireland costs other countries 16bn a year by allowing those companies to evade taxes in the EU.
How is Ireland's tax rate any different to Delaware's. Opportunity cost isn't the same
Jesus the heat at the moment.
I was planning on Germany, and I’ve recently met a German friend online which has solidified my choice
@Hikiru @Squizzy I live in Spain and I'm planning to move to Denmark or Norway in a few years. Heat is impossible to manage here, and the political system is almost beyond salvation.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen a mastodon account on lemmy
Where in Germany are you planning to go?
I’m considering Hamburg, it’s where my friend lives and I’ve heard it’s a nice city
Oh nice, than you'll be right in my neighbourhood. Hamburg is really nice and the northern Germans are the best ones (no bias of course :D).
Your visas are hard to get without a job, and the only jobs hiring foreigners are... big tech companies. I tried Ireland for years before giving up and going elsewhere.
Theres plenty of places that need workers, in the EU!
Depending on your education it will be easier or harder, of course (also which country you plan on going to)
France welcomes you with open arms, feel free to dm me :)
As a Brit, me too.
You caught my attention.
How has life changed for you since Brexit?
Not the person you asked, but for me:
So, yeah. Not everyone has had as bad a time as me, but everyone I know has encountered some negative fallout. I've yet to encounter anyone who has actually benefitted, even indirectly.
So err, do you think the country has any chance of fixing stuff up, considering Poland is on track to overtake the UK at this rate, within a decade? And have perhaps some of your political ideas/values or strongly held beliefs changed at all?
Different brit here. I suspect the plan is to reduce immigration by making the UK a place no one would want to migrate too.
On a related note, I believe Indians are emigrating to other EU countries too - it wouldn't surprise me if India's rise was a consideration for brexit. Naturally Indians (as with most people who wish to immigrate tbh) want to come to an English speaking country.
My political ideology has definately changed: I now think of myself as European, rather than British. The point of the EU project is that it doesn't fucking matter what flag you live under, or what language you talk, or which imaginary friend you worship; for all our differences were 99% the same, and want to live in safe places, eat good food, travel freely, speak out minds, work rewarding jobs, love who we want, work together to make the world better and delight in seeing others getting do the same. As a sometimes-vegeratian, coffee-loving IT worker from Manchester I have more in common with sometimes-vegetarian, coffee-loving IT workers from Mannheim, Maribor or Madrid than I do with some fat-necked millionaire power-lusting would-be dictator with whom my only common ground is a flag.
The purpose of the EU and it's predecessors is to make war in Europe impossible. It's that simple. Who are these people that would see that undone? Whoever they are, they call themselves British.
Lol, some would call you over remain-minded. I appreciate that you miss what you lost clearly (beyond even the wages).
As an EU citizen in blighty, I care even less about the EU than before seeing that even the wealthiest countries within the EU have regressed socially and politically.
Obviously your own issue doesn't have much to do with EU countries' domestic policies, you relied on UK membership of the EU for trade.
Jesus, i'm really sad to hear all that. 😢
Let's hope the british goverment comes out soon with a good strategy to push the economy forward, (or just reverse brexit altogether).
Damn, that's awful!
One urgent thingis that the EU follow the UK in abandoning the ill-conceived "client-side scanning", aka Chat-Control.
Both have laws like that in the making and beside tiny formalities the UK sadly didn't abandone it at all! :/
Glad the EU is cracking down on tech companies. They have done a good job fighting for consumer rights. Even improving them in nations outside the EU both by forcing companies to make global changes and by inspiring local legislation. It's something they should be proud of.
I am
Reading the guardian article I was like meh.. some stuff is good and anything is better than nothing but then I read the actual DMA
“Fines: of up to 10% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover, or up to 20% in the event of repeated infringements
Periodic penalty payments: of up to 5% of the average daily turnover
Remedies: In case of systematic infringements of the DMA obligations by gatekeepers, additional remedies may be imposed on the gatekeepers after a market investigation. Such remedies will need to be proportionate to the offence committed. If necessary and as a last resort option, non-financial remedies can be imposed. These can include behavioural and structural remedies, e.g. the divestiture of (parts of) a business.”
Fuck ya break up some of these fuckers if they keep breaking the rules and percentages of worldwide turnover? I can only get so errect
Even though this is EU based, if they actually follow through with the fines and possible breaking companies up I can’t see why the companies would not just make this a worldwide standard… I could be wrong of course cuz corporations are shit
EU comes to the rescue! Again!
Part of this "adhering to European rules" means complying with EU laws on "disinformation" and giving police forces of EU refined backdoor access to take down content.
I'm fine with (takedown-only) backdoors only for the big tech companies, as long as you're allowed to self host without backdoors.
I don't really understand how this is a material change from what AOSP gives you right now? Can anyone explain?
For example: AOSP has been available to EU start-ups for over a decade for free and open source but none have built alternative payment systems or email or maps or advertising services on top of it in a cohesive way before. What is this law going to allow them to do that they couldn't before? 🤔
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
They're not. But my point is that EU manufacturers / start-ups could easily make their own flavour of Android based on AOSP and launch that as a product. Why don't they? Case in point Huawei.
I think the argument is that the monopoly is present because it's basically pointless outside of China to launch a phone without play services. So while you can release a phone based on AOSP, it's not going to be successful financially without the Google apps and tweaks from Play Services
I know that I can uninstall first-party apps on iOS (for years now). I think Android users can, as well. It seems like, other than the monetization bit, this bill simply codifies things that already exist. Am I getting that right?
If so, they are praising themselves for saying "you have to" about things that already exist. Don't get me wrong, it's important to prevent backsliding (I hate that word), but c'mon. And yes, the anti-monetization bit matters, it should be there, I just think this is overblown reporting.
Carrier pre-installed apps are definitely not easy to uninstall on android
Have you ever touched a Google phone? You CAN'T uninstalled preinstalled apps on ether of them, if you don't root your device third party app stores suck, the law allows you to get rid of preinstalled bloat, messager interoperability is included and so on, that's a huge law and the first against silicon valley giants with enforcment that will actually hurt them!
It's not just that. Apple can't self preference their own app store on iOS for example. They not just have to allow other app stores or just installing stuff, they also can't have their own store as a default. They also have to enable people to use browsers other than Safari.
You can definitely disable most pre-installed apps on Android, and even force uninstall them with adb. But complete removal is hard, so they'll still sit on the hard drive.
Because every man and there dog can be bothered to go open a shell and find the command to uninstall via adb?
That's the problem. I hope the new rules will make it possible to remove apps without external hardware or software.
Heres hoping
Tyrannical government overreaching and stifling innovation. This is what happens when you don’t have the second amendment and civil rights for corporations.
Tell me, how does allowing users to uninstall apps stifle innovation?