Big Tech to EU: “Drop Dead”

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The European Union’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a complex, many-legged beast, but at root, it is a regulation that aims to make it easier for the public to control the technology they use and rely on.  

One DMA rule forces the powerful “gatekeeper” tech companies to allow third-party app stores. That means that you, the owner of a device, can decide who you trust to provide you with software for it.  

Another rule requires those tech gatekeepers to offer interoperable gateways that other platforms can plug into – so you can quit using a chat client, switch to a rival, and still connect with the people you left behind (similar measures may come to social media in the future). 

There’s a rule banning “self-preferencing.” That’s when platforms push their often inferior, in-house products and hide superior products made by their rivals. 

And perhaps best of all, there’s a privacy rule, reinforcing the eight-year-old General Data Protection Regulation, a strong, privacy law that has been flouted  for too long, especially by the largest tech giants. 

In other words, the DMA is meant to push us toward a world where you decide which software runs on your devices,  where it’s easy to find the best products and services, where you can leave a platform for a better one without forfeiting your social relationships , and where you can do all of this without getting spied on. 

If it works, this will get dangerously close to better future we’ve spent the past thirty years fighting for. 

There’s just one wrinkle: the Big Tech companies don’t want that future, and they’re trying their damndest to strangle it in its cradle.

 Right from the start, it was obvious that the tech giants were going to war against the DMA, and the freedom it promised to their users. Take Apple, whose tigh

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