The European Union on Tuesday placed a big target on Big Tech.
The EU’s commissioner for internal markets, Thierry Breton, said 19 companies and their services — including Apple Inc.’s
AAPL,
App Store; Amazon.com Inc.’s
AMZN,
Marketplace; Alphabet Inc.’s
GOOGL,
GOOG,
Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping and YouTube; Meta Platforms Inc.’s
META,
Facebook and Instagram; and Microsoft Corp.’s
MSFT,
Bing and LinkedIn — must adhere to the Digital Services Act, which requires them to perform risk management, conduct external and independent auditing and share data with authorities and researchers.
The companies must also adopt a code of conduct by August.
The rules, which have been strongly opposed by Apple and others, force companies to do more to tackle disinformation, offer more protection and choice to users and provide stronger protection for children — or risk fines of as much as 6% of their global turnover. It is the latest edict from European regulators in an effort to tamp down on the wide-ranging powers and influence of Big Tech.
U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, continue to struggle to pass laws to rein in tech companies.
“We consider these 19 online platforms and search engines have become systematically relevant and have special responsibilities to make the internet safer,” said Breton, who singled out Facebook’s content-moderation system for criticism.
“Now that Facebook has been designated as a very large online platform, Meta needs to carefully investigate the system and fix it where needed ASAP,” Breton said.
Other tech companies and services cited by Breton were Pinterest Inc.
PINS,
Snap Inc.’s
SNAP,
Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter Inc., Wikipedia and Alibaba Group Holding’s Ltd.’s
BABA,
AliExpress. Four to five companies additional could also fall under the Digital Services Act, with a decision expected in the next few weeks, according to Breton.
