The Digital Markets Law (DMA) is getting closer due to an agreement between the European Parliament and the EU States. Due to this measure, large messaging services, among others, would be required to be interoperable. Let’s see what this means and to what extent it can affect you.
The search for our mobiles to be freer is bringing big problems to the big companies.
After an agreement between the European Parliament and the EU States, the Digital Markets Law (DMA) could arrive at the beginning of 2023. Being able to download Google Play on your iPhone or send a message to WhatsApp from Signal seems crazy, but with This new law seeks this objective.
However, What is the Digital Markets Law? Is about a landmark law that will change the way tech giants compete with their rivals. The law applies to what are called gatekeepersdefined as any platform that has a market capitalization of €75 billion, or more than €7.5 billion of revenue in Europe.
This includes any company that has to do with platform services, online marketplaces, cloud services or search engines.
This law part of two very clear objectives: improve competition and innovation in the technology sector and that small companies can compete with large ones.
Among many other provisions, the DMA would likely prohibit Amazon from using data from its third-party sellers to inform development of its own products, and would require Android to offer users alternatives to Google search and email.
Several points have been established in this law. We highlight the following:
- Being able to uninstall pre-installed apps.
- When buying a new device, we can choose which services we want to use, for example, to perform searches (if we want the Google Play Store on our iPhone, we must be able to do it).
- The data of users of different products may not be crossed without the user’s consent.
- Interoperability of messaging apps.
Bearing in mind that some companies like WhatsApp, especially in the US, are using fear to show their advantages over other messaging systems to win over the public, this new regulation is quite detrimental. And that is, anyone who wants to use iMessage on an Android phone can do so.
The big problem is that the platforms may not be able to guarantee a high level of security and protection of personal data, so that the messages are encrypted. Security and interoperability of encrypted messaging services does not seem like such an easy task.
How services like iMessage and WhatsApp interoperate and preserve encryption hasn’t been invented yet.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism