this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 163 points 8 months ago (29 children)

The act doesn’t apply to all tech companies, only to those with either a market capitalisation of more than €75bn (£64bn), or having at least 45 million users and €7.5bn annual turnover in the EU.

In effect, this means just Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance (owner of TikTok). The fact that five of the six are US companies has, of course, led to complaints that the pesky Europeans have it in for poor defenceless American giants. Cue violins.

The act imposes serious obligations: companies will have to allow third-party apps and app stores on their platforms; provide transparent advertising data; allow users to easily uninstall pre-installed software or apps; enable interoperability between different messaging services, social networks, and other services, allowing users to communicate seamlessly across platforms; and be more transparent about how their algorithms rank and recommend content, products and services.

It also prohibits certain practices by gatekeepers: favouring their own services over third-party ones, for example; engaging in self-preferential activities; and using private data from business users to compete against them. In other words, an end to tech business as usual.

Sweet. What the corrupt US departments couldn’t - and refused to - do.

Member that time micro$quash was in court for a decade to prove they weren’t a monopoly despite being a monopoly, and then after all that the court declared they were a monopoly? Member? And then absolutely sweet fuck-all happened and they’re still out there monoply-ing without any care or hindrance? Yeah.

US, you fucked that up royal. As usual.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (8 children)

You remember how all the US politicians are funded by the same huge corporations and rich people who all benefit from the regulators doing nothing but pretending to care?

Remember how the politicians pander to Americans by blaming rich people for all of life's problems and saying they'll make them pay their fair share, but those politicians have multiple houses and blatantly conduct insider trading every day, but Americans still vote for them time after time?

I'd like to say you could just not use their products, but that means you have to replace windows with some other os, not buy a major manufacturer cell phone, or do much else 🤷

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

but that means you have to replace windows with some other os

Any problems with installing Linux? Try openSUSE if you don't like Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian, which are the most often recommended ones. It's the distribution most polished for that abstract "average user" that I've seen. And it's one of the traditional mainstream ones and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. (Btw all those Arch-based schoolboy distributions are trash and I don't use them, I also don't use Arch btw. I use Void.)

not buy a major manufacturer cell phone,|

BQ is nice. It is a major manufacturer though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

These are good suggestions for tech people IMO. I was thinking more general population that just wants to buy a product and use it as is. My mom isn't going to get a laptop and then install linux. I'd have to. 😇

I've never heard of BQ before, so that was an interesting mention. I didn't look hard enough to find out if it was available in the US.

I think the overall sentiment I'm conveying is that as a consumer, I'd like to just stop doing business with entities I deem bad faith (which is easy to say until you need a new TV and the 'good' company TV is twice as expensive). There's not a lot of choices for average people in this category (big tech). You'll be exposed to them almost out of necessity. I suppose appropriate regulation for those giant companies, and the US wont, but at least the EU will.

I also wonder if MS/Google/Apple were EU based corps, if they would take the same actions? I can't say how much of an average EU country's economy a company like Microsoft would be, but just the thought of how much that would be makes me think they'd get preferential treatment in which ever country that would be. I'd have to look at brands like BMW and see how they did doing that MPG scandal, things like that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Then let's hope for regulators. I'm in the second world anyway, so don't know how much of an effect those would be.

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