EU vs Big Tech: the cases keep mounting

The European Union (EU) has launched multiple probes and complaints against Big Tech and their handling of user data and maintaining privacy. Let's take a look at the latest tiffs:

Amazon

The European Commission (EC) on Friday asked Amazon to provide detailed information by July 26 on the measures the US ecommerce giant is taking to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA) obligations, especially its compliance with provisions concerning transparency of the recommender systems.

DSA requires Big Tech companies to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on their platforms.

Meta

EU regulators on July 1 had accused Meta Platforms of breaching the bloc's new digital competition rulebook by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them. Since November, Meta has been providing users in the EU the option of paying for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram. This is to comply with the continent’s strict data privacy rules, under which Meta must first get consent before showing ads to users.

In June, a Vienna-based privacy campaign group had filed complaints in 11 European countries against Meta, saying that the tech giant's planned privacy policy change would allow "unlawful" use of personal data for artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

AI partnerships

The partnership between Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI is also under the EU lens. The bloc's competition chief Margrethe Vestager said that antitrust regulators will seek additional third-party views on the partnership. Vestager in March sent questionnaires to Microsoft, Google, Meta's Facebook and ByteDance's TikTok as well as other big tech companies related to their AI partnerships.

Microsoft

EU said tech giant Microsoft violated its antitrust rules with "possibly abusive" practices by tying its Teams messaging and video conferencing app to its widely used business software. The European Commission informed Microsoft of its preliminary view that the company has been "restricting competition" by bundling Teams with core office productivity applications such as Office 365 and Microsoft 365.

Apple

Apple in June became the first company to be charged with violating the EU's Digital Markets Act. EU antitrust regulators said Apple's App Store rules breached EU's tech rules because they prevent app developers from steering consumers to alternative offers, a charge that could result in a hefty fine for the iPhone maker.

Because of its tough approach to Big Tech companies, Apple had said it would delay the rollout of its newly-announced AI features in Europe because of "regulatory uncertainties" linked to the EU's new legislation. Meta is also not releasing Meta AI in the region for now.

Temu, Shein

The European Union is planning to impose customs duties on cheap goods bought from Chinese online retailers including Temu, Shein, and AliExpress. Under current EU regulations, packages purchased online from a non-EU country are not subject to customs duties if their value is under 150 euros.