European Union agrees on Internet rulebook for Google, other tech giants

On Saturday, countries that are members of the European Union (EU) and EU lawmakers sealed a deal on new rules. The new rules require tech companies to do more to check illegal content on their platforms and to pay a fee to regulators that are monitoring their compliance. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the second prong of EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's strategy to constrain Alphabet unit Google, Meta, and other US tech majors. The EU antitrust chief in a tweet said, "We have a deal on the DSA: The Digital Services Act will make sure that what is illegal offline is also seen and dealt with as illegal online - not as a slogan, as reality."

Under the new agreement, DSA, the tech giants face fines up to 6% of their global turnover for violating the rules set by it. The repeated breaches by the companies could attract a ban to do business in the EU. The new rules ban targeted advertising aimed at children or based on sensitive data such as religion, gender, race, and political opinions. Dark patterns, which are tactics that mislead people into providing personal data to companies online, will also be restrained. The Tech companies also face a yearly fee up to 0.05% of global annual revenue to bear the costs of monitoring their compliance.