Big Tech, 19 companies in the sights of the European Commission

The European Commission it inserted 19 Big Tech in the list of companies that will have to follow the stricter rules set forth by Digital Services Act. This package of rules intends to regulate the activity of the digital giants, by requesting more transparency, more thorough moderation of content and other stringent obligations.

19 Big Tech in the sights of the European Commission: who they are and what they should do

Among the companies indicated there are five subsidiaries of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. I am: Google Maps, Google Play, Ricerca Google, Google Shopping e YouTube. Then there are Facebook e Instagram per Meta, Amazon Marketplace. and then theApp Store per Apple, Linkedin e Bing per Microsoft. They complete the list Booking, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia, Zalando, Alibaba and AliExpress.

Note the strong presence of social networks and stores, both digital and physical products. But also Wikipedia, the result of an association. The European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Thierry Breton it is also considering whether to add another four or five companies to the list.

These realities fall within the criteria chosen by Brussels to identify the very large online platforms (Vlops) or the very big search engines (very large online search engines, Vloses). Those able to achieve at least the 10% of the entire population of the European Union, around 45 million people.

The 19 big techs will therefore have to be more transparent about how their algorithms workremove more content or services that are considered “illegal” e limit advertising content based on sensitive informationsuch as your ethnicity, sexual orientation or political preferences.

Will also be prohibited i dark patternthose mechanisms that push users to do certain actions, e advertising messages aimed at minors. The DSA also requires companies to create crisis unit to manage threats to public safety in real time and to adhere to a code of conduct by August. The risks? Fines of up to 6% of global turnover: enormous figures for such large companies.