Welcome to Euractiv’s Tech Brief, your weekly update on all things digital in the EU. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
“I cannot imagine they [Big Tech] are not right now on top of the European Commission trying to make sure that all they have to do is a sign of code of conduct.”
– on addictive design, said MEP Kim van Sparrentak (Greens, Netherlands).
Story of the week: The push for legislation to curb addictive design in big tech is expected to continue after June’s EU elections, say MEPs behind the initiative. A consumer protection file, including this issue, may be initiated in the next mandate. The European Parliament adopted a resolution in December 2023, urging the Commission to consider such legislation, with 545 votes in favour. MEPs highlight a strong demand for action, including a “right to not be disturbed” and the option to buy apps and smartphones without addictive features. Read more.
Don’t miss: A more right-wing European Parliament could mean fewer regulatory initiatives in tech, a weakened push for market integration, but more support for defence innovation. The Parliament is projected to shift towards the right after the elections on 6-9 June. “There would be a preference to stay away from creating new initiatives to complement the already existing ones,” said Florian Cortez, a Joint Research Fellow at the Egmont Institute and the European Policy Centre. Read more.
Also this week:
- Schrems NGO filed 11 complaints across Europe over Meta’s use of data to train AI
- Commission shrugged off MEPs calls to address social media disinformation risk ahead of elections
- The upcoming battle over telecoms deregulation
- European telecom price cuts on the cards in next EU mandate
- EU countries may soon push for human rights and tech standards focus group in ITU
Before we start: If you just can’t get enough tech analysis, tune in on our weekly podcast.
Artificial Intelligence
Is Huawei back? The Shenzhen-based hardware giant says its Ascend 910B AI chip at least as good as, if not better than, Nvidia’s A100, according to a Huawei executive, as reported by SCMP. In some tests, the Ascend 910B chip beats Nvidia’s A100, one of the most popular AI GPUs ever created, by 20%, the executive said. Nvidia is cutting prices for its most advanced chips in China to compete with Huawei, Reuters reported in late May.
Fake news. The most popular news app in the US turns out to be churning out AI-generated false information, Reuters reported.
Competition
OpenAI partnership, Microsoft teams unbundling discussed between Commission and Microsoft. Brad Smith met with Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager on Tuesday in Brussels. They discussed the unbundling of Microsoft Teams, Reuters reported. The Commission has been looking into potential abuse of dominant position and is expected to deliver a statement by the summer. They also discussed about the Microsoft-OpenAI $13 billion partnership, which the Commission decided to examine in January.
US regulators to investigate AI antitrust practices. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) struck a deal with the Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate anticompetitive practices in AI, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The FTC will investigate the Microsoft-OpenAI $13 billion deal, while the DoJ will look into AI chipmaker Nvidia. The deal comes after months of negotiations between them about their respective competencies in AI antitrust.
Cisco invests in Mistral. US hardware firm Cisco is investing in France’s Mistral AI as part of a newly-launched $1 billion fund for AI, said a Tuesday (4 June) press release. Among the first $200 million committed, funds will also go to Canada’s Cohere and San Francisco-based Scale AI.
Data & Privacy
Persistent Russian disinformation attacks. France, Germany and Poland have become “permanent” targets for Russian disinformation attacks in the run-up to European Parliament elections this week, a senior EU official said on Tuesday. Read more.
EU’s disinformation team struggles to counter Russian disinformation. The European Union’s disinformation-busting team last month debunked a Russian-language video on YouTube that said citizens were fleeing dictatorship in EU member Poland and seeking refuge in Belarus, a close ally of Moscow. Read more.
Global Witness says TikTok failed its disinformation test. Popular social network TikTok approved adverts containing political disinformation ahead of European polls, a report showed on Tuesday, flouting its own guidelines and raising questions about its ability to detect election falsehoods. Read more.
Italian regulator hits Meta with €3.5 million fine. The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) announced on Wednesday that it fined Meta over violation of the Italian consumer code about Facebook and Instagram’s collection of data when users create their social media accounts.
Digital Services Act
European body of media regulators comes to the Commission’s help. The European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services will support the EU Commission’s new role of regulatory authority under the Digital Services Act, the Commission said in a Tuesday press release. That includes identifying and assessing systemic risks related to pluralism, disinformation and the protection of minors. Previously, the Commission only concluded bilateral agreements with four national ERGA members: France, Italy, the Netherlands and Ireland.
Industrial strategy
STEP up(date). The European Commission updated its Guidelines on Regional State Aid last Friday to permit Member States to offer higher levels of regional aid for projects falling under the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP). This amendment aims to support investments in critical technologies relevant to the EU’s green and digital transitions, fostering competitiveness while maintaining cohesion objectives.
Law enforcement
Disagreements on the latest CSAM compromise text. A joint statement published last Monday by the Global Encryption Coalition and, together with several other organisations, such as Mozilla, Signal, or Access Now, opposes the Belgian EU Council Presidency’s compromise proposal on regulating child sexual abuse material (CSAM). It praises the EU Parliament’s exclusion of encrypted services but criticises the Council’s push for scanning technologies. The compromise text, which Euractiv also reported about, suggests scanning visual content with user consent, but the statement argues it’s inadequate and could be bypassed. It calls on the Council to reject proposals inconsistent with encryption principles to safeguard digital rights.
Facial recognition. Sweden’s government said Monday that it wanted to give law enforcement the ability to use real-time facial recognition technology from cameras in public places. Read more.
Media
Complicated times for French communications regulator. The French audiovisual and communications regulator, Arcom, handles several contentious issues. One is the involvement of President Emmanuel Macron in EU campaigns, which should be deducted from the allocated broadcast time on national TV of his Renaissance party, negatively impacting the French centrist lead candidate Valérie Hayer. Arcom is also addressing the complex matter of digital television frequency redistribution. This involves scrutinising the decisions related to billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s TV channels, C8 and CNews, which have been accused of broadcasting biased and far-right information. Read more.
Platforms
Commission shrugs off MEPs calls. MEPs urged measures to address disinformation and foreign influence before EU elections, highlighting concerns about recommender systems promoting extremist content. A letter to the European Commission, signed by 39 MEPs, suggested disabling personalised recommendation systems by default on major platforms. The Commission’s response, given just two days before the elections, stated that the Digital Services Act (DSA) leaves risk management decisions to the platforms, not imposing a uniform approach. Read more.
X needs to step up children’s protection for sexually explicit content. On Monday, X announced it would allow pornographic content on its platform. It looks like a “provocation”, said French Secretary of State Marina Ferrari in an interview with Le Parisien on Wednesday. Under the newly promulgated French digital law SREN, platforms should put in place age verification systems to protect children from viewing pornographic content. The French regulatory authority Arcom is currently mulling a temporary age verification system using credit cards.
Shein IPO in London. The e-commerce app is preparing to file for a £50 billion (€58 billion) listing on the London stock exchange, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Sky News confirmed the story. The UK channel previously reported that Chancellor of the Exchequer, a role equivalent to a finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, courted Shein for a London listing.
TikTok shopping platform on hold. TikTok has decided to postpone the launch of its e-commerce business in major European markets, including Spain, Germany, Italy, France, and Ireland, Bloomberg reported last Friday. This decision comes as the company focuses on addressing regulatory challenges in the US, where it faces potential divestment or a ban. Plans to introduce the shopping platform in Mexico and Brazil have also been put on hold. There’s uncertainty about when or if ByteDance will resume these plans.
Political ads. TikTok approved political ads containing false information ahead of European elections despite its own guidelines, according to Global Witness, an international campaign group. Global Witness submitted 16 fake ads targeting Irish audiences, and TikTok approved all. The ads included misinformation about the elections, such as warnings of violence and incorrect voting procedures. TikTok attributed the breach to human error.
Trump on TikTok. Former US President Donald Trump has joined TikTok, The Guardian reported on Sunday, despite his past efforts during his presidency to ban the app. In 2020, he issued an executive order to ban the platform in the US due to its connections with China, which courts ultimately blocked. Trump’s campaign sees TikTok as a way to connect with younger voters, the Guardian said. Trump surpassed President Joe Biden’s follower count in less than three days, NBC reported. Biden signed legislation to ban TikTok over national security concerns, but the app is fighting the ban in court.
Standards
Human rights and tech standards. Some EU countries are looking to start a focus group on human rights and tech standards under the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) umbrella, Bilel Jamoussi, who leads these groups at the international organisation, told Euractiv. A group of European countries had drafted a proposal for focus groups that would look at the connection between technology standards and human rights, which was “floating around” among diplomat circles in Geneva back in January, said Jamoussi. Read more.
Telecom
Telecom price cuts on the cards. While most politicians and lawmakers have been discussing enlargement prospects for the EU, others have quietly worked to bring together EU citizens and their European neighbours in a much more technical but tangible way: telecommunications. EU politicians have put up a successful decade-long regulatory fight to reduce the telecom bills of EU citizens when travelling abroad by cutting roaming fees. Considered one of the EU’s most tangible “successes”, it is often referred to as the “roam-like-at-home” regulation. Read more.
The upcoming battle over telecoms deregulation. Reforms of the telecom sector are expected to be at the top of the policy agenda for the next EU mandate, and a battle is already heating up over the need to deregulate it. The drive to regulate the sector is reinforced by its role as the backbone of the digital economy. Investments are necessary for these upgrades, as much as €174 to €200 billion at the European level, and the Commission sees deregulation as a vital tool to meet this funding goal. But consumer groups and smaller telecom operators argue that deregulation would harm competition and end-users, particularly vulnerable groups. Read more.
Finally, a Boeing rocket for astronauts. After two failed attempts, Boeing finally succeeded in launching its Starliner crewed capsule carrying two astronauts to the International Space Station on Wednesday. In 2014, NASA chose Boeing, along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to design a new class of crewed spacecraft after the agency shut down its own Space Shuttle program. SpaceX made it in 2020 with its Crew Dragon craft. But the Starliner presented helium leaks. Four of its 28 thrusters lost power, which the astronauts managed to bring back, and at some point, it was uncertain whether it would dock at the ISS at all, the Associated Press reported.
SpaceX’s Starship didn’t blow up. SpaceX managed to launch and return its Starship rocket, the world’s biggest and most powerful ever created, after four attempts on Thursday (6 June). Parts of the rocket became detached during the flight to 211 km above sea level, but the rocket remained intact and transmitted data successfully, the Associated Press reported.
What else we’re reading this week:
How to Lead an Army of Digital Sleuths in the Age of AI (Wired)
Updated: A dataset on EU legislation for the digital world (Bruegel)
A whack-a-mole approach to big tech won’t do, says Europe’s antitrust chief (Margrethe Vestager in The Economist)
[Edited by Alice Taylor]
