The European Union is expected to unveil new regulations that it claims will “overhaul” the digital market, along with how tech companies work.
A pair of laws-the Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts-will be revealed later on Tuesday.
They are supposed to be the largest revision in 20 years, concentrating on rivalry and making platforms responsible for hosted content.
Heavy fines are also likely to be levied for breaches of the law.
The regulations are being driven by Commissioners Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton, both of which have an extended history of agitation against the most important tech giants-competition commissioners and therefore the internal market.
The pair pointed to the tone of the proposals: “The corporate and political ambitions of a handful of corporations do not determine our future.
“Our rules on digital services in Europe – the foremost common single market within the world – dating back to 2000. Most of the online sites didn’t exist back then,” they stated.
“We got to refresh our toolbox to make sure that our rules and values are upheld everywhere. Both online and offline.”
One main aspect of the law is intended to counter the domination of major players, such as Google and Facebook, which appear to be US-based.
In general, the European Commission has suggested that it objects to such giants by using the data they collect from one service to “improve or build a better one in another region, finding it challenging to compete with them.
The Commission calls such companies ‘gatekeepers,’ claiming that they ‘set the rules of the game for their customers and their rivals.’
Technology analyst Benedict Evans said that the new regulations are likely to have “unexpected consequences”.
“California thought Uber drivers should be classed as employees, which we will debate, but passed a law that inadvertently banned all freelance jobs,” he said, citing a long-standing conflict over workers’ rights in the state that was settled only by popular vote last month.
“GDPR sought to guard privacy, but also improved Google and Facebook and hindered independent media,” said Evans. Relatively small media outlets have found it very difficult to conform with privacy, causing many US outlets simply not to allow EU readers to access their pages.
He said that he wanted the new acts to contain “probably contain reasonable things, controversial things, and silly things”
