EU unveils ‘revolutionary’ laws to curb big tech firms’ power
www.theguardian.com
Digital Markets Act aims to allow more competition and let consumers delete preloaded phone apps
  • New regulations will target six major tech companies to improve consumer experience and data privacy. These include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft.
  • Pre-installed apps like weather and email that are difficult to delete will be disallowed, aiming to promote interoperability and reduce “gatekeeping” activities.
  • Companies will be prohibited from monetizing user data collected from phone apps for advertising purposes.
  • The regulations will encourage competition by allowing alternative payment systems, benefiting startups and consumers.
  • The European Commission aims to empower consumers and ensure tech giants adhere to European rules, providing immediate accountability for any issues.
  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    218·
    1 year ago

    I know that I can uninstall first-party apps on iOS (for years now). I think Android users can, as well. It seems like, other than the monetization bit, this bill simply codifies things that already exist. Am I getting that right?

    If so, they are praising themselves for saying “you have to” about things that already exist. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to prevent backsliding (I hate that word), but c’mon. And yes, the anti-monetization bit matters, it should be there, I just think this is overblown reporting.

    • alekks09@lemm.eeEnglish
      18·
      1 year ago

      Carrier pre-installed apps are definitely not easy to uninstall on android

        • ඞmir@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          Deleting it makes no sense with the way Android partitioning works. Disabling it prevents any of the code from running. The only way to find it again is to manually go into the settings of your phone and search for disabled apps.

            • ඞmir@lemmy.mlEnglish
              6·
              1 year ago

              Yes. Android has a separate partition with a fixed size that stores all preinstalled apps. Deleting one of them wouldn’t help with giving more storage for user files, all it would do is break the ability to restore everything with a factory reset

                • ඞmir@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Would take more internet bandwidth and make first boot slower. Would also reduce performance for thise apps, as this way they can have pre-optimized versions of every app.

    • Gamey@feddit.rocksEnglish
      111·
      1 year ago

      Have you ever touched a Google phone? You CAN’T uninstalled preinstalled apps on ether of them, if you don’t root your device third party app stores suck, the law allows you to get rid of preinstalled bloat, messager interoperability is included and so on, that’s a huge law and the first against silicon valley giants with enforcment that will actually hurt them!

    • maynarkh@feddit.nlEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      It’s not just that. Apple can’t self preference their own app store on iOS for example. They not just have to allow other app stores or just installing stuff, they also can’t have their own store as a default. They also have to enable people to use browsers other than Safari.

    • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      You can definitely disable most pre-installed apps on Android, and even force uninstall them with adb. But complete removal is hard, so they’ll still sit on the hard drive.