European Union countries and EU lawmakers reached an agreement on Saturday on the Digital Services Act (DSA), which would require tech giants to step up efforts to police illegal content on their platforms and pay regulators a sum of money fees to monitor their compliance.
After more than 16 hours of negotiations, the EU finally reached an agreement. The DSA is the second weapon launched by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager to rein in Google, Meta, and other U.S. tech giants.
At the end of March this year, the EU passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA is focused on antitrust, potentially changing the core business practices of tech giants in Europe, limiting their market power. DSA focuses on the platform’s regulatory responsibility for the content and targeted advertising.
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“We’ve reached an agreement on DSA: DSA will ensure that illegal behavior online is treated as if it were illegal offline – not as a slogan, but as a reality,” Vestager said on Twitter.
Under DSA rules, companies that violate the rules face fines of up to 6% of their global turnover, and failure to correct them could result in their ban from doing business in the EU.
The new bill bans targeted ads targeting children or based on sensitive data such as gender, race, and political opinions. “Dark patterns,” tactics that mislead people into giving their personal online data to companies, will also be banned.
Furthermore, tech companies are also required to pay up to 0.1% of annual global net profits to cover the cost of monitoring their compliance. The EU could earn between 20 million and 30 million euros per year.
