European Parliament Adopts DSA, DMA

On July 5, 2022, European Parliament voted by large majority to adopt both the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. These laws will address competition, transparency, and consumer protection in digital markets and are likely to significantly impact tech giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and more.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) has a wide consumer protection scope, including specific requirements on mandatory risk assessments and audits, content moderation, and bans on targeted advertising for children, targeted advertising based on sensitive data, and dark patterns. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) looks to competition and interoperability by mandating user access to their data, barring platforms from favoring their own services over others, and allowing users to remove pre-installed software or apps. Both carry significant fines for violations – up to 10% of annual global turnover for DMA violations and 6% for DSA violations.

EPIC has been active on calling out the privacy impacts of lack of competition in big tech, pushing for bans on surveillance advertising, and issuing complaints, testimony, and calls for action on dark patterns.