A number of companies, including Meta, have self-designated themselves as “gatekeepers” under the DMA rules, which will potentially make them subject to stricter regulations around data sharing and giving preference to their own products.
Gatekeepers are banned from combining users’ personal data across different platforms under the DMA.
Threads is designed to let users follow the same accounts they’ve connected with on Instagram and keep their Instagram usernames, helping the social media giant leverage its billions of users to quickly gain scale.
You are correct, by now there are some standards. But look at the clusterfuck that the current digitization initiative is: for each service to be offered, a different municipality is responsible. Instead of all municipalities funding a common shared institution. We’re seeing entirely predictable results. :sigh:
The European Union Digital Markets Act, coming into effect in May 2023, explicitly forbids such behavior. (If twitter is classified as a "gatekeeper".)
Example of the “don'ts” - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer:
- treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform
- prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms
The way Elon seems to like to take his chances, Twitter pulling out from the EU/EEA market might be a possibility. Personally I think that would be beneficial, as even more would switch to Mastodon in 2023. Even if I don't use social blogging websites myself, I think that would be a net win.
I’ve been thinking recently that Elon might actually have the hidden goal of attempting to get the US to pass legislation forbidding social media companies from doing this sort of thing.
I’ve never had the slightest illusion about Elon Musk or his principles. About the most I can say for him is he has said a few things I agree with over the years.
If that were his goal, he could gave done it for far less than $44B. how many dark money donations, Super PACs and think-tanks (left and right) could he have funded with 'only' $2B? Probably enough to get him an amendment in a must-pass bill with bipartisan support. For even less money, he could petition the state legislature in Texas or Florida to pass another Social Media law.
I wonder what amount of twitter revenue and users are in the EU?
Also I strongly suspect that mastadon would have a lot of trouble complying with European laws (except I think some have company size minimums that mastadon instances would likely not reach).
"She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour 9:00 a.m.
And I'm gonna be high
As a kite by then
...
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them
If you did"
If someone follows me, that means they’ve affirmatively expressed interest in what I have to say. How is it “spam” for me to tell them how they can continue hearing from me?
He's saying such a rule from the EU could allow spam from the companies themselves, not that these posts from advocate users would be an instance of spam.
> He’s saying such a rule from the EU could allow spam from the companies themselves
The word “consumer” in the rule that gatekeeper platforms must not “prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms” has a meaning, and that meaning is, in this case, “Elon Musk is wrong”.
Odd use of 'gatekeeper' isn't it? Even if I would call this 'gatekeeping behaviour' (I don't think it is, the way that's usually used around here at least? Not to say that it isn't 'misbehaviour') surely the thing that's objected to really is gatekeeping by x platforms, where x is 'monopoly' or 'dominant' or something?
Twitter is a bit of a gatekeeper is it not? So many companies ran their customer service through there, it became one of the dominant customer service platforms (alongside Facebook). On top of this, many news platforms also relied heavily on Twitter to break and share news, same with journalists who used Twitter as their only form of communication effectively.
Twitter was positioning itself as a major gatekeeper of information, and so I do think the EU should be looking into this carefully in hopes of preventing it from happening again.
To be clear, I don't object to there being the regulation at all, I was just commenting on the word choice, which to me, and apparently vehemently not others, seemed unusual.
A correct use of "gatekeeper" as it always has been.
You might be more used to the more informal social media use of the word meaning busybodies that involve themselves unasked to police people's behaviors to their own arbitrary standards; this is not it.
By far the most prevalent use I see is Wiktionary's #3 'one who gatekeeps' > verb #5:
> (by extension, slang, Internet) To limit another party's participation in a collective identity or activity, usually due to undue pettiness, resentment, or overprotectiveness.
But in the (today) rarer, less metaphorical sense... It's not that either? What is Twitter guarding access to? It's not, we're talking about Twitter itself.
My view is that "gatekeeper" used to - and still does - mean someone or something with actual power over belonging to something, and by extension "gatekeeping" commonly means someone who doesn't have actual power but tries to exert social influence as if they decided who does and doesn't participate in or belong to a thing. I think the two meanings continue to coexist depending on context.
> My view is that "gatekeeper" used to - and still does - mean someone or something with actual power over belonging to something, and by extension "gatekeeping" commonly means someone who doesn't have actual power but tries to exert social influence as if they decided who does and doesn't participate in or belong to a thing.
From a straight up grammatical perspective, I'm not sure what you're saying makes sense, or really what you're trying to say. What you're saying "gatekeeper" means tracks just fine. But I'm getting thrown for a loop with "gatekeeping" because that's either a verb (e.g. "The dog is gatekeeping.") or an adjective (e.g. "The gatekeeping dog..."), but you're giving it a meaning that only works for a noun ("someone who doesn't have actual power but...").
Basically, I don't understand what you're trying to say, but what you're saying seems like something I'd like to understand.
As far as grammar goes, I think I was implying that "gatekeeper" does suggest the older meaning more, and "gatekeeping" the newer meaning. But I'm not sure if that's a rigid rule or why the pattern exists.
I think the term gatekeeper makes more sense if applied to companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft & Co, with their search engines, maps, app stores, operating systems, browsers ... all these are gateways to "the digital market". Twitter might be to small and comparatively niche to be classified as a gatekeeper. There does not seem to be an exact definition that I could find. But social networks as a category and companies like Meta/Facebook are listed as gatekeepers.
> There does not seem to be an exact definition that I could find.
From the regulation, Article 3:
1. An undertaking shall be designated as a gatekeeper if:
(a) it has a significant impact on the internal market;
(b) it provides a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users; and
(c) it enjoys an entrenched and durable position, in its operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future.
2. An undertaking shall be presumed to satisfy the respective requirements in paragraph 1:
(a) as regards paragraph 1, point (a), where it achieves an annual Union turnover equal to or above EUR 7,5 billion in each of the last three financial years, or where its average market capitalisation or its equivalent fair market value amounted to at least EUR 75 billion in the last financial year, and it provides the same core platform service in at least three Member States;
(b) as regards paragraph 1, point (b), where it provides a core platform service that in the last financial year has at least 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10 000 yearly active business users established in the Union, identified and calculated in accordance with the methodology and indicators set out in the Annex;
(c) as regards paragraph 1, point (c), where the thresholds in point (b) of this paragraph were met in each of the last three financial years.
Thanks for digging that out. That's a good expansion of what I meant by 'dominant platform' really, it's just to me, in what I see, that's not the way 'gatekeeper' is used (in the popular modern way, nor does it make sense at all in a metaphorical to historical/literal way). People seem to disagree :shrug:.
Indeed, however the AptX family has other codecs that support even better quality (AptX Lossless) and lower latency as well as adaptive bitrates, so modern AptX support is still better (hence almost as good)
I don't find the argument "richer countries can emit more CO2" to be helpful. The richer the country the more money is available to act responsible.
Even in your GDP adjusted data France is 37% lower than Germany (0.14/0.09). In a global comparison both countries are doing fine, but not good enough: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/ .
The point isnt that rich countries can emit more CO2, the point is that we want poor countries to become much richer, but not emit immense amounts of CO2.
Some people claim this isn't possible. For them only carbon pollution is a true measure of societal wealth. They really like to emphasise that if poor people emitted CO2 like America, then the planet would die, and if America emitted less CO2 then they'd be as poor as some starving refugee in Somalia, hinting darkly that maybe we should kill those poor people, or at least keep them poor, to maintain our standard of living.
But the stats show you can be richer and emit less GHG, often those two things help each other.
Some people claim it's all just trickery because the rich countries buy stuff made in the developing countries, but there's stats that show this is also declining similarly. Various nations are proving that it is possible and the whole world has signed up to work together on it, so it might just be okay.
Germany and France are both doing okay, and the retirement of nuclear in Germany, which gets talked about so much, is not visible at all. When they had more nuclear, they had more CO2 per GDP.
Note nuclear is low carbon power, I'm not saying that it's not, but there's a million other lefty-green things that Germany (and France and even the UK and US) are doing to solve the problem and we should acknowledge that reality rather than say "if you don't use nuclear you don't even believe there's a problem".
And I am totally for these "million other lefty-green things". Solar and wind is comparatively cheap to install and comparatively low effect on nature. The resulting energy is also cheap (if used locally). We have many (poor) villages here in Germany owning their own wind turbines and benefiting from selling this energy, greatly improving the financial situation for the local population. It's like farming but with wind turbines.
In the long run Germany will be better of. We just have to get through this painful transition.
France sadly stopped improving and stopped building at the pace they did before and had to fall back on gas.
The Left in France has been fighting nuclear for 30 years and made progress in that when nuclear was really down after 2011.
Germany on the other hand could have easily overtaken France had they mass produced nuclear. Germany as an engineering nation would have been good at this. And unlike with solar, they would be huge in the global world market as well.
A German court can not, in fact, serve a court order to Volkswagen America. (Technically it can, but the order is not enforceable.) A German court is also forbidden to force Volkswagen AG to reach into Volkswagen America because these are separate legal entities.
A German court would use judicial assistance and ask US law enforcement to help. US law enforcement would then adhere to local laws and protect the rights of US citizens while trying to help.
Searching for "12.1 Regions. Customer can specify the location(s) where Customer Data will be processed within the" (as mentioned in the verdict) yields AWS as the problematic sub-processor for company A: https://d1.awsstatic.com/legal/aws-gdpr/AWS_GDPR_DPA.pdf
"(1) Personal data shall be: (f) processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures (‘integrity and confidentiality’)."
No, opening a connection and exchanging IPs falls under "technically necessary" processing of personal data.
But from a legal point of view we, as a European company, are forbidden to use any US infrastructure provider. We can't ask for consent to transfer data to an US based entity if our consent form itself is already hosted by an US based entity. And even if we did find a solution, like hosting the main infrastructure with a European company and asking for consent for some later data transfer, we are most likely forbidden to transfer data to US based entities at all.
This will change soon. From what I heard work is underway to let national data protection offices handle cases without the Irish DPC or force the Irish CPC to work.
That is not true. IP addresses are explicitly stated as personal data. That they are a technical requirement for a connection only has repercussions on how you are allowed to store and process this data and the consent you need to get from the user for your data processing.
You are not allowed to send IP addresses (even if they are a technical requirement for connection set up) to companies under US government control before you get full consent from the EU user.
The "technical requirement" exception (to process data without consent) only applies to GDPR complaint data processors which US companies can't be because of the Cloud Act.
There is a huge difference between using your IP address in the course of the technical implementation of the IP protocol and the subsequent logging and re-transmission of that address to others, effectively you are agreeing with the GP while starting your comment with 'that is not true'. It is true. And you confirmed it.
"(1) Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: (b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract;"
"(1) Personal data shall be: (f) processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures (‘integrity and confidentiality’)."
To quote https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-05/meta-won-... :
A number of companies, including Meta, have self-designated themselves as “gatekeepers” under the DMA rules, which will potentially make them subject to stricter regulations around data sharing and giving preference to their own products.
Gatekeepers are banned from combining users’ personal data across different platforms under the DMA.
Threads is designed to let users follow the same accounts they’ve connected with on Instagram and keep their Instagram usernames, helping the social media giant leverage its billions of users to quickly gain scale.