How Europe’s bold new rules for Big Tech could change the services you use

These are just some of the changes that could come about for consumers from Even tech advocacy groups opposed to the DMA also agree that the legislation will result in major changes. “Many of the requirements force the Big Tech platforms to change their services in pretty significant ways,” said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the Chamber of Progress, an industry organization backed by Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook’s parent, Meta. And as with other proposed regulation targeting the industry, some tech groups also warn of unintended consequences from the DMA for companies and consumers. While the legislation is clearly targeted at the dominance of US tech giants, it doesn’t single out specific companies. Instead, the DMA creates a special category of “gatekeeper” businesses that are subject to greater regulation. It will cover platform providers who meet several benchmarks, including having more than 45 million monthly EU users and EU revenues of at least 7.5 billion euros or a market cap of at least 75 billion euros. The regulations will apply only in Europe, but many policy experts expect that the ideas set forth in the DMA could eventually be enshrined into law worldwide, both because it sets expectations for regulators elsewhere and because tech companies could choose to adopt the changes more widely. “We often see that it’s easier for companies to implement a change globally than to just do it in one jurisdiction,” said Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director at Public Knowledge, a US-based consumer advocacy group. “There very well may be changes to US products that comply with the EU rule. Here are some of the ways the rules may affect users in Europe, and possibly beyond. Messaging services The new legislation could also change the way consumers message each other. A big focus of the DMA is on interoperability, or the ability for platforms from different providers to connect to each other. Portions of the DMA specifically zero in on interoperability among private messaging apps, such as Apple’s iMessage and Meta’s WhatsApp and Messenger services. The DMA sets the stage for iMessage users to be able to send messages to WhatsApp users or vice versa, or for WhatsApp users to be able to message Telegram or Signal users, or any other combination of the above. A consumer using iMessage may also be able to video call or send files automatically to someone using WhatsApp or Messenger. The legislation gives competing messaging platforms the right to ask to connect to one another’s users. Exactly how this would work, technically, would be the subject of future standards-setting. B ut establishing the requirement is the first step toward a more interoperable world where platforms can’t simply rely on their size and popularity to “lock in” their users and prevent them from switching, policy experts say. At the same time, however, security experts say that what makes some messaging apps so powerful — their privacy features, and particularly support for end-to-end encryption — could be compromised under the mandate. Not only are there technical challenges to building a secure system that works across multiple platforms, but there may also be problems tied to identity management and the privacy risks that crop up alongside them. “Interoperability has long been viewed as a way to solve lock-in problems,” said Bruce Hoffman, a competition expert at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb. “The thing about interoperability requirements is that you have to be very careful with how you design them and what they actually do.” There is some risk that in order to meet the interoperability requirements, messaging services could offer the most basic format of their platforms for European consumers, removing end-to-end encryption and other, more advanced features that users elsewhere in the world will still have access to, according to Nick Seeber, a partner leading Deloitte’s Internet Regulation team, which helps advise online companies on how to comply with regulations. The new rules could also create some challenges for smaller tech players. “The companies who are best at offering regulatory compliance are the largest tech platforms who have got the deepest pockets and resources to be able to implement these parts of the regulation,” Seeber said.