The lawmakers of the European Union have recommended regulating the business of Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple in the EU. The Digital Services Act shall govern these U.S. tech giants. It makes it mandatory for the companies to take more steps to police the internet for harmful and illegal content. According to the Act, the laws of Ireland shall regulate the business of Facebook, Google, Alphabet, and Apple, whereas the laws of Luxembourg shall govern Amazon.
A few other countries, including France, are stepping into the governance to ensure strict compliance with the laws and preventing delays in decision-making. Christel Schaldemose, one of the lawmakers of the EU, is working on the core propositions of the Act and adding or amending the provisions of the Act for stringent regulation of the companies’ activities in the EU. One of the initial measures adopted by Schaldemose as part of the Act is to impose a ban on targeted advertisements at the DSA. This provision does away with targeted ads that appear on Facebook based on the user’s social media behavior. However, this ban will not impact the advertisements that appear on Facebook based on the user’s activities on other websites of e-commerce.
The lawmaker is striving hard to finalize the draft with other lawmakers within the next couple of months. The draft rules were initially devised by Margrethe Vestager, the renowned antitrust chief of the EU. The technology firms of the US, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, are now meeting penalty charges of around 10% of their yearly turnover. According to the draft rules, the EU is planning to break up the companies to curb the unrestricted powers of operation of the companies in the EU. The draft rules will significantly affect the technological giants that control huge volumes of data and are associated with thousands of companies across the world.