EU Sets To Break Facebook, Google, Others’ Monopoly On Data
The European Commission has finalised procedures to adopt a new regulation, the Digital Services Act (DSA) by December 2020 to enable it break the monopoly currently enjoyed by the Big Technology firms like Facebook and Apple on Big Data so as to bring the data-powered economy back to the owners.
“The European Commission on 8th September finished public consultations on the DSA package. The act is set to be voted for adoption in the upcoming months'”, Daniel Markuson, a Digital privacy expert at NordVPN told InsideBusinessNG in an email.
NordVPN is the world’s most advanced VPN service provider that is used by over 14 million internet users worldwide. It provides double VPN encryption, malware blocking, and Onion Over VPN with over 5,000 servers in 60 countries worldwide.
The aim of the new act is for EU companies to be part of the Big Data business which is expected to reach 175 zettabytes by 2025 and currently controlled by a handful of the so-called Big Tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, or Microsoft. The Big Tech collect data from data producers that do business using the platforms owned by the Big Tech companies, and none of these companies is European.
The EU’s draft proposal which is expected to be adopted by end of 2020, is to dismantle monopoly and strip-off the Silicon Valley giants, the right to use the data produced by Europeans unless the data is accessible to all business users in the same commercial activities.
This act if it is adopted and implemented successfully, will move the EU in the same direction with China and others that have moved to break the monopoly of the Big Tech. The Act, the EU believes will strengthen the single market for digital services and foster innovation and competitiveness in the European online environment.
China bans access to platforms like Google, Facebook, and Amazon to censor the content available to its citizens. Turkey also acted alike on October 1 with the effectiveness of its law that requires the Big Tech to comply with the government’s demands on content censorship.
Recall that in February, Margrethe Vestager, the executive vice-president in charge of regulating Big Tech, warned that dominant players would be forced to open up their data to smaller competitors.
The new Digital Services Act is expected to have two main pillars. The first will address the risks faced by users and protect their rights which involves aiming to gain backdoors to end-to-end encryption, and the second is, to stop large online platforms (Big Tech) from acting as gatekeepers for the free flow of information. This is expected give a boost to European SMEs.
“Tech companies must keep a close eye on these attempts by the Europeans. As of now, free sharing of information was impossible to implement, but, if the EU succeeds, it might add another good spin to the global tech economy, especially the one that relies on data, like Artificial Intelligence,” explains Markuson.
The DSA is planned to have a more interventionist approach compared to its predecessor, the e-Commerce Directive, and will have broad implications for European and non-European businesses operating within the EU.
The new rules will have an impact on transport and tourism platforms, e-commerce marketplaces, social media platforms, online sellers, data services, online search engine providers, and more.
One of the industries that heavily depends on the free flow of data is artificial intelligence (AI) which is considered to be the fourth industrial revolution, and which Europe is afraid, they might be running late. However, Germany outpaces the leaders in AI (China and US) by the level of employee training on AI, but the further success depends on the amount of data and how fast it can be accessed. No surprise officials took action to gear up. Besides building opportunities for European tech to flourish, Big Data demonopolization may put user privacy in jeopardy.
Europeans have succeeded in driving the digital transformation before. They have set the golden standard for data protection under GDPR, which inspired other countries to follow suit. Just recently, Brazil adopted LGPD, and California has its own Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Other initiatives that have fostered the development of the data economy are the regulation on the free flow of non-personal data, the Cybersecurity Act (CSA), and the Directive on Open Data.
“The European stance will give a positive push to more than economic integrity alone. It will also have a positive impact on the freedom of the internet in general. The circulation of freely shared information will make it less possible for censorship to flourish,” adds the digital privacy expert” according to Markuson.
The downside however is that the privacy of end-users will fall under higher risk. These changes might increase the demand for privacy tools as consumers will have to equip themselves with enterprise-grade VPN and communication tools to keep their private lives safe.
Unsurprisingly, Google took steps to outpace the EU by introducing their own VPN solution that would make users invisible.
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