03/11/2024

Europe is Breaking Open the Empires of Big Tech

Tech giants have to comply with a new EU law that is set to change the internet

Citizens of the European Union (E.U.) live in an internet built and ruled by foreign powers. Most people in the E.U. use an American search engine, shop on an American ecommerce site, thumb American phones and scroll through American social media feeds.

That fact has triggered increasing alarm in the corridors of Brussels, as the E.U. tries to understand how exactly those companies warp the economy around them. Five years ago, Shoshana Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism neatly articulated much of lawmakers’ critique of the tech giants, just as they were preparing to enforce the flagship GDPR privacy law. Now as the E.U. enacts another historic piece of tech regulation, the Digital Markets Act, which companies must comply with starting tomorrow, March 7, a different critic du jour sums up the new mood in Brussels.

In his 2023 book, Technofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis argues the big U.S. tech platforms have brought feudalism back to Europe. The former Greek finance minister sees little difference between the medieval serf toiling on land he does not own and the Amazon seller who must subject themselves to the company’s strict rules while giving the company a cut of each sale.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.