Internet giants subjected to unprecedented rules in the EU

the giants of Internet They must respond as of this Friday in the European Union to reinforced obligations of transparency and the fight against illegal contentunder penalty of significant fines, under a new law without precedent in the world.

The ambitious Digital Services Law (LSD) is imposed as of this Friday on the 19 main social networks, commerce sites and search engines, including Google, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, X (ex-Twitter) or TikTok.

These companies, which each have more than 45 million active users in the European Union (EU), are subject to new obligations to combat disinformation, online hate, child pornography or counterfeiting, all under the surveillance of the European Commission.

“Europe is today the first jurisdiction in the world where online platforms no longer have ‘favorite treatment’ and do not set their own rules. Now they are regulated entities just like financial institutions”declared Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, promising to “scrupulously enforce LSD”.

Is about “protect our children, our societies, our democracies”, wrote the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on the social network X.

Violators face penalties that could reach 6% of their group’s global turnover and, as a last resort, in case of repeated serious breaches, a temporary ban from operating in the EU.

Platforms must offer Internet users a tool to easily flag illegal content, as defined by national legislation or European texts, and quickly remove it.

They must also submit to an independent annual audit to verify proper compliance with their obligations.

Commerce sites need to be able to track sellers to reduce scams.

Amazon and Zalando Resources

Their algorithms are also under scrutiny: platforms must explain how their recommendation systems work and offer alternatives without personalization.

Regarding advertising, LSD prohibits targeting minors or publishing ads based on sensitive data (religion, sexual orientation, etc.).

Several giants have already announced changes to comply with the rules before the Friday deadline. TikTok already allows you to disable personalized content recommendations, determined by algorithms based on the supposed interests of the user.

Microsoft (LinkedIn and Bing) also indicated new measures on Friday to respect the law, offering users the same choice over recommendations as TikTok.

The same in Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which claimed to have hired 1,000 people for the LSD application. The Californian giant also committed to referencing and archiving all ads aimed at Internet users in the EU and to disclose the parameters used for segmentation (age, gender, location…), just like Microsoft.

Google also promised to provide more information about how content is moderated on its services, and to allow researchers access to more data.

X’s owner, tycoon Elon Musk, said Friday that the social network is “working hard” to comply with new European standards.

Last June, a stress test carried out by an EU team with Twitter concluded that this social network still had “a long way to go” to respect the rules of LSD, according to a Commission official.

A hundred people in the European Executive are in charge of monitoring the application of LSD.

The Amazon and Zalando commerce sites, which are among the 19 “very large platforms” Subject to the new rules, they filed an appeal before the European courts considering that they do not meet the criteria to be on that list.

Pending the court decision, they will have to abide by the rules, except for a provision of the LSD on the transparency of advertising for Amazon, the Commission said.

In general, most of the changes induced by this legislation will not be immediately visible to the user, since many will take place behind the scenes, within the companies involved, warned the same source.

Source: AFP