from Hacker News

EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

by raimue on 3/25/22, 7:39 AM with 341 comments

• by hrnnnnnn on 3/25/22, 8:23 AM

  > Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council of interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms. For group chats, this requirement will be rolled out over a period of four years.

  This would be great. I remember using pidgin back in the day and it was really convenient to have every messaging app in one interface.

• by igorkraw on 3/25/22, 9:38 AM

  I pray that this, especially the interoperability requirements comes through not only with teeth, but with claws and a ravenous hunger. I believe one of the key things that allow innovation to foster is beating down the rentseekers,i.e. enabling adversarial interoperability https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interop... and making it easy for individuals to tinker and innovate without needing capital or lawyers to protect themselves. I am severely envious of the californian "right to compete" for these reasons https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-in... and a "right to interoperate" will go a long way towards breaking monopology-enabling network effects.

• by chmod775 on 3/25/22, 8:54 AM

  > mandates to allow users to install apps from third-party platforms

  Some people at Apple are getting a headache right now. Other companies that have been dabbling with the idea to lock down their OS probably too.

  If this happens my next phone might even be an iPhone.

• by dzink on 3/25/22, 1:17 PM

  If only they’d apply those rule to grocery store chains as well. The model for the big ones is to charge stocking fees for any shelf space (250k per item at times) and then replace the best sellers with proprietary generic brands. So soda giants who don’t want competition can just buy out the shelf space to keep smaller players out and then lower the quality of ingredients of their mass stocked products and boost the marketing to keep the shelf space monopoly. The best new products try out and then fizzle out in that environment in exchange if more generic tastes or artificially tasting junk. This model needs to be stopped in more than just online marketplaces. It is the original sin of chain retail.

• by emsy on 3/25/22, 8:54 AM

  It will be fun to see how tech companies will react when they get to taste their own “my platform my rules” medicine.

• by pjerem on 3/25/22, 10:15 AM

  Did I interpret correctly that I’ll soon be able to install a multi-protocol IM app on my iPhone without going through the App Store ?

  I can barely believe it. It looks monumental in terms of competition potential.

• by tebbers on 3/25/22, 12:48 PM

  Pretty funny to think that Apple has been going on about their platform without realising that they run on the EU's legislative and societal platform. Which also comes with rules.

• by ivancho on 3/25/22, 8:47 AM

  > The new rules for so-called gatekeeper platforms, derived from years of antitrust enforcement in the digital economy, include restrictions on combining personal data from different sources, mandates to allow users to install apps from third-party platforms, prohibitions on bundling services, and a prohibition on self-preferencing practices.

  The first one sounds very damaging to adtech, but might not be enforced.

• by can16358p on 3/25/22, 9:09 AM

  While I think big tech needs to be controlled, I think this is the wrong approach.

  This will slow down development by being forced to implement interop where they shouldn't be forced to IMO, and will confuse less savvy users (e.g. "Why can't I send this $platform_native_content to Bob but can send perfectly to Alice in the same app?").

  Controlling entities' presence within the public (the Internet) is one thing, forcing to do things within their own platform/domain is another.

  Sadly, EU picked the latter.

• by giorgioz on 3/25/22, 9:59 AM

  Oh founders please do not sell your shares to Apple/Google/Microsoft/Facebook/Amazon!

  We are in danger of creating Big Monsters that will devour everything until there won't be founders anymore...only employees. Once there will be only employees in truth there will be only servants.

  We need a lot of small/medium tech companies to maintain freedom and competition instead of 2-5 mega corps.

• by Havoc on 3/25/22, 9:31 AM

  Seems like a good thing.

  Looking at the google lawyer privilege drama it sure seems like big tech needs a firmer hand

• by sofixa on 3/25/22, 11:44 AM

  Honestly that's some great news and it was about time for such a regulation. It will curtail monopolies/oligopolies and enable a lot of new innovation. Win-win, with the only "losers" ( as in lower profit margins, not actually losing anything) being the huge tech companies like Google, Meta and Apple.

• by eterevsky on 3/25/22, 8:35 AM

  > EU officials have agreed on landmark rules

  I'm not sure what this means in terms of the timeline. Will it be voted for in European Parliament and if yes, when? To what extent this may be changed in the final edition? And if it's adopted as a law, how much of a grace period will the companies have?

• by Luker88 on 3/25/22, 4:17 PM

  Honestly? Looks good.

  They only missed one: must provide human support for any and all products and supported services.

  Google/MS/Apple have 0 user support for account/app suspension/removal and we have seen many stories here on how final those things are, and without any recourse possible

• by acd on 3/25/22, 5:51 PM

  Mind boggling that content recomendation by tech giant algorithms that is used by european consumers are unregulated.

  The algorithms maximize content view / platform usage diregarding mental health and addiction. Further there is no regulation that the content from recomendations are from reliable truthful sources.

• by niemandhier on 3/25/22, 11:55 AM

  The interoperability features are needed. We all should have a look at Russia and see what can happen if your infrastructure depends to strongly on locked systems.

  Sure this time we all support the sanction, next time it might be us.

• by hda111 on 3/25/22, 2:09 PM

  I‘m not sure if this is a good thing. Despite email being an open standard we have now the situation that most emails are processed by either Google or Microsoft. When the same happens to Matrix we will have a situation where it’s so hard to make your own home server that nobody wants to do it anymore.

• by nonrandomstring on 3/25/22, 10:14 AM

  This has to extend to business as well as consumer use. Give people the power to choose technology in all contexts. That's all we need.

  You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple.

  But interoperability legislation can only go so far to fixing things because we also need to tackle:

  - Regulator and institutional capture by vendor lobbying (bribes)

  - "Preferred solution" impositions masquerading as fake security "policy"

  - Lack of skills in organisations.

  - Poor education about the risks of technological mono-cultures

  - Technical lock-in measures, DRM, TPM enclaves

  BigTech domination has been going on for 10-15 years now, and it has become more than just than just a set of facts around market shares and network effects. It's gotten soaked into our culture and the marrow of our institutions and will take a good deal of pain to chase out.

• by Markoff on 3/25/22, 4:24 PM

  so, all the software companies need to do is implement also SMS feature in their messengers like Signal does for instance and they will be immediately interoperable, while keeping their own messaging service separated

• by belter on 3/25/22, 10:07 AM

  Digital Markets Act- [Status]: "Awaiting Parliament's position in 1st reading"

  https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheproc...

  "The Digital Markets Act: ensuring fair and open digital markets"

  https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...

  From here:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777016

  "...The legislation is now expected to target companies that have a market capitalisation of at least €75bn and run one core online “platform” service such as a social network or web browser, according to two people directly involved in the deal..." "...To qualify as a “gatekeeper” — the powerful internet groups that are the focus of the new law — a company will also have to have at least 45,000 active users, the same people said..."

  "...Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft all meet this standard, but it is likely to also include far more groups than previously thought such as accommodations site Booking.com and ecommerce group Alibaba..."

  ----------------------------------------

  Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to:

  - Allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations

  - Allow their business users to access the data that they - generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform

  - Provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper

  - Allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform

  Example of the “don’ts” - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer:

  - Don't treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform

  - Don't prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms

  - Don't prevent users from un-installing any pre-installed software or app if they wish so

  ----------------------------------------

• by ddaalluu2 on 3/25/22, 12:33 PM

  I imagine being told which tech I have to use when developing my services. When they pay my bills they just might have a saying but only just. What even is the reasoning for this?

• by naoqj on 3/25/22, 9:34 AM

  It's so easy to destroy a sector when you have nothing to lose.

• by wil421 on 3/25/22, 1:00 PM

  So now we will have to accept 2 pop ups on every website?

• by emilfihlman on 3/25/22, 12:01 PM

  This is awful. EU has no idea how to properly regulate tech.

• by FreeHugs on 3/25/22, 8:46 AM

  One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. And we keep piling more and more bureaucracy on top of it.

  This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook.

  And it sets the stage for the next big applications of the web all being build outside the EU as well.

  Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup. And if they do, they spend endless amounts of energy on agonizing over the GDPR and how to build useful international services without using international tools. We sanctioned ourselves by making the use of foreign SAAS illegal.

  If you are in the EU, try out surfing the web via a non EU IP once. It is an eye-opening experience. No cookie banners! Only Europeans have to deal with those.

  But it gets worse: Look at European websites from a US IP. You do get cookie banners. European companies deal with degraded user experience, slower build time and worse monetization. On a worldwide basis. While the rest of the world only applies these downsides to the European part of their business.

• by cryptica on 3/25/22, 2:15 PM

  IMO, based on their current business models, big US tech companies would be better off financially by pulling out of the EU entirely than by allowing interoperability via public APIs.

  They will lose most of their users to small platforms if they provide too much interoperability - Not just in the EU but all over the world. Their monopoly over the bulk of the world's user accounts is their only real competitive advantage.

  That said, in terms of social good, open APIs would be great.