The Internet is part of our daily life and we use it for everything. From the notification that tells you to upload a new photo to BeReal to knowing how to get to your destination without getting lost along the way. But now some things will change. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (or DMA for its acronym in English Digital Markets Act) enters into force and Europe prepares to change the rules of the Internet, to comply with the changes.
The Internet will be more open, more interoperable, more global. The mission of this law is to regulate the digital sector and apply changes and rules to large technology companies. The obligations will be applied to social networks, search engines, online intermediation services, cloud services, operating systems, browsers, virtual assistants, etc. Some new rules that will mainly affect the giants of the sector, such as Amazon, Google or Meta.
There will be changes for technology companies. Changes that promise that they will be to protect people and other companies from unfair practices but also that seek to ensure that society receives all the benefits of technology to make the most of it and be able to make the most of what the Internet or these companies offer us. .
“If you have an iPhone, you should be able to download applications not only from the App Store but also from other application stores or from the Internet”, the statements of Gerard de Graaf, one of those in charge of the Digital Markets Law of the European Union and something like the EU ambassador in Silicon Valley for a few weeks. Undoubtedly, as highlighted in the Wired article, much more work has been done in Europe than in the United States on the regulation of technology companies, something that will bring several changes to the continent regarding what can now be done on the Internet.
There will be changes in social networks and it will probably be the one that users notice the most, beyond the great changes in large companies around the world. For example, it is expected that this new regulation will let the user choose how they want to see content on social networks. Let it be the user who chooses in which order… but there will also be other changes that will not be so favorable for the user of social networks. For example, the text states that the social network will be legally responsible for the content published on it.
The intention is to allow the entry of smaller competitors to fight for a cake that is currently divided among a few, something that De Graaf believes will cause a wave of lawsuits and lawsuits, something that does not worry Europe because, as this new ambassador says based in California: “The key message is that the negotiations are over, we are now in the compliance phase. You may not like it, but that’s the way it is.”
In addition, there is a second EU law, the Digital Services Law, which also promises to be a battlefield with some Internet giants, since it proposes to force large social applications such as TikTok to open their data to be studied externally. . In addition, the application of additional rules on Artificial Intelligence, a technology that should be key in the coming years, is being considered.
Europe has changed the rules of the game for the big technology companies and, in the coming months, both they and users will begin to understand them and behave in accordance with the new laws.
