Today, we launched our new Mastodon instance. It will ensure a privacy-focused space to engage with and get the latest from our Commissioners, departments, and the official voices of the Commission.
We want to thank @Mastodon for stewarding us and helping us make this possible.
Fostering European digital players is vital to our strategy for a stronger #DigitalEU.
This is a unique opportunity to grow the community even more. Let's get there!
Delightful 💕 to see that #EuropeanCommission now has an official #Mastodon instance. #EC loves Mastodon, as the image clearly shows.
I hope this love will expand further to not just extend to one #FreeSoftware microblogging application, but to become a full embrace of the #OpenStandards based decentralized #SocialNetworking environment and #SocialWeb technology ecosystems that have formed around its open protocols, such as #ActivityPub.
#EU#EC#Regulation: "The issues are diverse, but connected: collapse of information; protecting children; electoral integrity; unassailable tech monopolies; security and war; labour; carbon. Any of these profound problems is enough to threaten our way of life. Together they are the great challenge of our age.
In the crucial half-year before they take up their role, the next President of the Commission must start planning now. We need a whole-of-Commission approach. Too often, the Commission’s many directorates and units work in silos, contradicting and cancelling each other. We propose a new structure to marshal Europe’s diverse powers and resources.
First, the next European Commission must adopt a whole-of-Commission approach. Too often, the Commission’s many directorates and units work in siloes, contradicting and cancelling each other. We need a new structure to marshal Europe’s diverse powers and resources."
#EU#EC#Neoliberalism#Antitrust#Competition#BigTech: "In 2019, a year after the GDPR came into force, Johnny Ryan appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and told them that “things I think are looking very bleak for our colleagues at Google and at Facebook … it is highly likely that they will be forced to change how they do business.” At the time, he was working for Brave, a privacy-focused web browser founded by the author of the Javascript programming language.
I asked Ryan what happened. “I was a naïve young man,” he chuckled. In fairness, at the time he added the caveat that the Europeans had yet to enforce their own policy. The Commission shipped out enforcement to member states’ data protection authorities, without much pressure to apply the law as written. Tech platforms quickly realized that if they headquartered in one EU country, they could funnel all GDPR regulatory enforcement there. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta set up shop in Ireland, and Amazon in Luxembourg; both are notorious tax havens with incentives to be friendly to Big Tech. Ryan made a public records request asking how many Irish investigators were working on GDPR, and was told the agency didn’t even have records to find out who was investigating.
“If you have free movement within the EU but strong national state authorities in their territories, it’s obvious that corporates will play them against each other,” said Repasi, and that’s what happened. A parallel problem is that the GDPR didn’t focus enforcement toward the biggest purveyors of data, meaning that the smallest website operators—“local sports clubs and dentists,” Ryan said—felt the biggest relative impact.
“When a member state doesn’t enforce European law,” Ryan added, “the European Commission is the guardian of the treaties of the EU and they should take that state to court … [but] 10 to 15 years ago the Commission stopped taking cases against member states. It’s love instead of power.”" https://prospect.org/world/2024-04-03-eurocrats-on-the-brink/
First, today we are opening a case against Meta. We suspect that Meta is breaching the DMA rules on data combination [Article 5(2) DMA].
You all heard about Meta's “Subscription for No Ads” model. With this new model, users have to pay if they want to use Facebook and Instagram without targeted advertising. And this has forced millions of users across Europe into a binary choice: “pay or consent”. And if you consent, Meta can use your data, generated for example on Messenger, to target ads on Instagram.
But the DMA is very clear: gatekeepers must obtain users' consent to use their personal data across different services. And this consent must be free! We have serious doubts that this consent is really free when you are confronted with a binary choice. With the DMA, users who do not consent should be provided with a less personalised alternative of the service, for example financed thanks to contextual advertising. But they do not have to pay.
This is because with the DMA, we want to give back to our users the power to decide how their data is used: to pave the way for business models where citizens' rights are at the centre of operations.
Some of you may recall, we are already looking into this practice of Meta under the DSA: earlier this month, we sent Meta a request for information to verify how this “Subscription for No Ads” model complies with the DSA obligation to offer at least one option of their recommender systems not based on profiling, but also to assess the risks stemming from the personalisation of digital services.
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Second, today we are also opening a second case against Alphabet. We suspect that Alphabet is breaching the DMA prohibition of self-preferencing [Article 6(5) DMA]." https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_24_1702
"Per 9 december dit jaar mogen de instellingen en organen van de Europese Unie niet meer werken met Microsoft 365. Tenzij de Europese Commissie voor genoemde datum kan aantonen dat data buiten de EU verantwoord worden verwerkt. Dat is de uitkomst van een onderzoek door de Europese Toezichthouder op de Gegevensbescherming (EDPS)."
#EU#AI#AIAct#EC#DemocraticDeficit: "With respect to how the EU operates and the “democratic deficit” that has often been criticized, it’s also interesting to see that the EU Commission decided to set up that AI Office even before the AI Act had been passed into law. They are in a rush, but not a gold rush for the EU economy: they’re in a rush to regulate. It is clearly problematic when the executive branch of government acts as if a law that is still in the making had already been enacted. In an acute crisis (like the recent pandemic), that could be excused. There is no excuse here. It just shows that the AI Act was pushed through by politicians who wanted to claim to have done something innovative in the regulatory field, even if it’s bad for EU innovation and competitiveness."