The EU is about to announce new rules for Big Tech

The European Commission is about to propose a “revolutionary” overhaul of digital regulation that could hurt the business models of Big Tech, industry experts told CNBC. The Digital Services Act, due to be presented in early December, is expected to overhaul the management of content on platforms like Google and Facebook and is the first of its kind since 2000. Broadly, the EU wants to make tech giants more responsible for the content on their platforms, and to ensure that competitors have a fair chance to succeed against the big firms.

“It’s revolutionary,” Thomas Vinje, a partner at the law firm Clifford Chance, told CNBC Tuesday. The upcoming rules are “likely to require dramatic changes in the business practices and even business models” of Big Tech, he said. Last month, Europe’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager outlined some of the changes that could be included in the new regulation. “The new rules will … require digital services, especially the biggest platforms, to be open about the way they shape the digital world that we see. They’ll have to report on what they’ve done to take down illegal material,” she said.

“They’ll have to tell us how they decide what information and products to recommend to us, and which ones to hide, and give us the ability to influence those decisions, instead of simply having them made for us. And they’ll have to tell us who’s paying for the ads that we see, and why we’ve been targeted by a certain ad.” This would be massive for tech firms, which have refused to disclose their algorithms for years.

The EU is about to announce new rules for Big Tech — and there’s not much they can do about it, CNBC, Nov 5