ethnicity or sexual orientation. It also bans
deceptive techniques companies use to nudge
people into doing things they didn’t intend to,
such as signing up for services that are easy to
opt into, but hard to decline.
To show they’re making progress on limiting
these practices, tech companies would
have to carry out annual risk assessments of
their platforms.
Up until now, regulators have had no access
to the inner workings at Google, Facebook
and other popular services. But under the
new law, the companies will have to be more
transparent and provide information to
regulators and independent researchers on
content-moderation efforts. This could mean,
for example, making YouTube turn over data
on whether its recommendation algorithm
has been directing users to more Russian
propaganda than normal.
To enforce the new rules, the EU’s executive
Commission is expected to hire more than 200
new staffers. To pay for it, tech companies will be
charged a “supervisory fee.”
Experts said the new rules will likely spark
copycat regulatory efforts by governments in
other countries, while tech companies will also
face pressure to roll out the rules beyond the
EU’s borders.
“If Joe Biden stands at the podium and says ‘By
golly, why don’t American consumers deserve
the same protections that Google and Facebook
are giving to Europe consumers,’ it’s going
to be difficult for those companies to deny
the application of the same rules” elsewhere,
Scott said.