Happy DMA enforcement to those who celebrate

March 6, 2024 4:21 PM

Enforcement of the Digital Markets Act began today in Europe. The Verge covers how various big "gatekeeper" tech companies have adjusted or augmented the services they provide in Europe, and in some cases globally, to comply with the law, which among other things, mandates new requirements for data portability and sharing between services owned by different companies, and limits on sharing data between services owned by the same company. This new regulation targets six tech giants, all of which have publicized at least some of their plans and intentions to adjust their offerings to align with the new law in public statements (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft). But as the deadline to comply has approached there's also been a fair amount of sniping, as well as some questionable decisions and outages possibly caused by last-minute DMA-related updates to services.

I'm not honestly sure I believe this law will make things work any better for the general public, though I'd love to be proven wrong. Looking forward to seeing how big the fines are though! Anyway, if any services from these six companies are acting weird, slow, or wonky today, you can almost certainly blame DMA switches being flipped in cubicles and open-plan offices all over the world.

posted by potrzebie (11 comments total)

It's not meant to make things for better for the general public. It's meant to make things better and more lucrative for huge international companies with HQs inside the EU.

How else do you think Spotify is going to get that quarter billion dollars to pay Joe Rogan? They already fired just about everyone inside the US that wasn't directly connected to keeping their podcast studios running. They already pay artists less than every other streaming service. All that's left is getting their mommy to put rules in place that ensure a larger portion of the pie goes into their pockets rather than someone else who happens to not have the EU writing protectionists laws on it's behalf.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 4:38 PM on March 6 [5 favorites]

that appears to me to be an idiosyncratic take, but also i haven't been paying a huge amount of attention to the dma. can you clarify what you're saying and why the dma leads to it?

i've gotten a close enough view of the assorted bigtech companies that i feel comfortable classifying my loathing of them as justified rather than kneejerk, and i've rather liked the various other pieces of legislation that the eu has enacted to (for example) make it at least slightly more difficult for creepy bigtech sleaze to stalk people around the Internet then sell the results of that stalking campaign to ad companies. the gdpr is insufficient, of course, but at least it's something, and something better than any other jurisdiction's got going on right now.

but so yeah based on my "hey, bigtech is sleaze and eu legislation has historically forced them to ever so marginally clean up" feels, my reaction to the "the dma isn't for the public interest it's just to benefit eu companies over non-eu companies" thing is like "???". but i 100% admit that the source of the questionmarks might be me not having deep knowledge of the dma or the discourse around the dma rather than any problems with your take.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:52 PM on March 6 [5 favorites]

These laws need an "or we'll have our most underpaid queer woman bureaucrat slap your CEO upside the head" clause.

No underhanded PR campaigns, or...
No dragging your feet, or...
No malicious compliance, or...
posted by tigrrrlily at 4:55 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

It's definitely not not to benefit EU companies over non-EU companies! That's absolutely a big part of it. But I think there are also things in the law that might benefit consumers if the companies in question mounted a good-faith, thorough effort to comply.
posted by potrzebie at 4:56 PM on March 6

or if at some point the law was supplemented to patch all the zero-days that the dirtbag companies are trying to sleaze their way through. and/or if they're punished for attempting to use those exploits.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:59 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

This new regulation targets six tech giants [...] (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft).

Tired: FAANG
Wired: MAMBAA
posted by mhum at 5:41 PM on March 6 [9 favorites]

Outside of EU, one has a choice of getting a mobile phone that allows sideloading, or getting a mobile phone that does not allow sideloading. Inside of EU, that choice is not available, and one can only get a mobile phone that allows sideloading.

(Yes, one may choose to not sideload any apps onto the mobile phone, but that's only for the privileged. Many may be forced to sideload apps from their employees or governments or from other more powerful entities.)
posted by applesurf at 7:47 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Hi everyone! Check out what Microsoft is doing to comply with the DMA.

Stuff like not trying to force Edge down people's throats and making Windows 11 less of a hellscape are laudable goals. I see DMA as pushing back, albeit lightly, against the enshittification that (yes, mostly American) companies are chasing in the name of increasing shareholder value at the expense of their users.

Concrete example: MS Outlook very recently added an option, "open links to M365 documents with (which) browser", with the default being, you guessed it, Edge. The ridiculous consequence being that clicking on a link in an email would open a different browser depending on where the link is pointing to.

It's exactly this kind of mercantile BS that I hope the DMA can put an end to. The big companies don't give a row of buttons about materially degrading user experience in the name of market dominance. That's not how capitalism is supposed to work.
posted by ianso at 9:51 PM on March 6 [3 favorites]

One of the most important words to understand this piece of rulemaking is “regulatory capture”, where rulemaking bodies such as governments become controlled by whoever is making honkingly large piles of money at the time.

Basically, for the past 25 years American corporate interests and the interests of the American state have combined to form a fantastically soft environment for ‘doing shit with computers’. At first the American state didn’t understand. Then, it didn’t care. Finally, it was convinced that this was a great thing because of huge piles of money, which could be used to hire lawyers, think tanks, or factory premises in the voting district of your choice.

DMA is the European answer to the American state’s under-regulation of computer based industries. To paint it as “the old world doesn’t like new money” is a simplistic idea, because these companies have major presences in both areas. It’s better to think of it as the correction to America’s lack of action. And, as long as American politics remains dysfunctional, unable to legislate, and unwilling to reign back its worst capitalist impulses, this type of legislation will be needed.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:22 PM on March 6 [15 favorites]

Honestly, if it's a little protectionist of EU tech companies: good. Our US tech companies are crybaby assholes who consistently fuck with users, flout govts, destroy our environment, and promote the infantile "break things" as a credo. I mean maybe the EU companies will prove just as bad eventually but hey it's nice to see someone else get a chance, and to slighty even the playing field against enormously powerful giants who habitually act in bad faith.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:51 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]

Concrete example: MS Outlook very recently added an option, "open links to M365 documents with (which) browser", with the default being, you guessed it, Edge. The ridiculous consequence being that clicking on a link in an email would open a different browser depending on where the link is pointing to.

Even better: Say you go to the default programs setting and change your browser from Edge to whatever. If you open a link from the natively installed version of Outlook (versus online) it will just... open the link in Edge anyway! Outlook (a program made by Microsoft) ignores Windows (an OS made by Microsoft) defaults! You have to go digging in the preferences for Outlook and change default browser in there.

(which reminds me... I have an unistall Edge program from 2018. Wonder if it still works...)
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 11:55 AM on March 7