The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is proving to be a tough nut to crack for some big American tech companies.
The penultimate to feel the full weight of the law on its “back” has been Meta, which in the last few hours has been accused by the EU of violating European legislation through the option «payment or consent» that the company positions on Facebook and Instagram. According to this policy, European users of the platform are offered two options: either pay a monthly fee in exchange for not receiving any type of advertising, or continue using both platforms for free, taking into account, however, that their personal data will be used to show advertisements based on their interests.
According to the EU authorities, this violates the DMA in that the company would be legally obliged to offer users the possibility of choosing what to do with their personal data. In other words, there should be an option whereby their data is not sold and they can therefore receive advertising without a personalised user profile being created.
Meta of course does not share this point of view and in his response he assures that Ad-free subscription follows instructions from Europe’s highest court”They also insist that this option complies with the WFD, and hope to continue dialogue with the European Commission in order to close the investigation.
Apple, Microsoft, Google…
But as we mentioned at the beginning, Meta is by no means the first company to have seen the DMA force it to substantially modify its business model on the old continent. In the last six months, those from Cupertino have been “forced” to allow third-party app stores on their iOS devices, facilitate external payment gateways, open up their NFC chip (Apple Pay) and substantially modify the commissions they charge developers.
And although the company has been “diligently” implementing many of these measures, last June the commission ruled in favour of Spotify and argued that the Cupertino company was still not complying with European legislation, stating on this occasion that the commercial conditions imposed by the multinational prevent developers from freely directing their customers. In response, Apple has decided to delay the launch of some of its most anticipated new products in Europe as long as possible.
While this is happening, Microsoft has had no choice but to develop a special version of Windows 11 that puts into the hands of EU consumers many possibilities that are denied (and everything indicates that they will continue to be denied) to users in other geographies, such as being able to uninstall the browser. Edgethe searcher Bingor get rid of OneDrive and other apps that come pre-installed.
The truth is that the fear of not complying with the DMA or data protection regulations such as GDPR is leading companies on the other side of the Atlantic to be increasingly cautious when launching new applications or services, especially those related to the artificial intelligence.
And in this sense, Apple is not the only one that has assured that its Apple Intelligence platform will arrive later (if it arrives at all) to Europe, but in the case of Google, some of its most advanced services that have been presented in the United States for some time, such as «Search Generative Experience» and that applies generative AI techniques to improve the search results (although this is subjective) offered by the search engine.
In the balance between innovation, legislation and respect for individual privacy, we are heading towards a world that moves at three speeds: China, where mass surveillance AI knows no limits; the United States, which is trying to follow the European example in some and rare cases; and an EU that risks being left behind if it is not able to relax certain aspects of its most protectionist laws.