Welcome to The Fineprint, where reading the latest legal drama affecting businesses is as fun as watching the third season of Suits.

Did you know… the legal sector recently hit record-high employment levels. But given that 2024 has seen multiple high-profile lawsuits hitting the headlines on a weekly basis, that stat totally makes sense.

Coming up in today’s print:

• Have you noticed yet? We’ll discuss how the EU is reshaping the world’s largest internet platforms.

• TikTok might actually get banned for real this time.

• Texans are being ID’d to watch spicy vids.

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BIG TECH

Our Favorite Internet Platforms Will Never Look The Same

Let’s start with a game. 

How many times have you interacted with these companies so far today?

• Apple  (iPhone, Apple Music, Safari, etc)

• Google  (Android, YouTube, Gmail, etc)

• Amazon  (Amazon marketplace, AWS—supports 40% of all internet traffic) 

• Meta  (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp)

• Microsoft  (Windows, Teams, ChatGPT)

• TikTok  (well… just TikTok, for now) 

If you’re anything like us then the answer is more times than you can count. We’ve become heavily reliant on these 6 major tech platforms, and not just as consumers, but as businesses too: 

• Over 50 million companies now rely on WhatsApp to reach customers

• Businesses spend over $10 billion a year advertising on TikTok 

• Amazon sellers ship over $300 billion of products a year

The massive influence that these platforms hold have earned them a new title: gatekeepers. A “gatekeeper” is a new term coined by the EU to describe companies that: 

1. Make ungodly amounts of money 

2. Support millions of other businesses 

3. Hold a dominant and enduring market position 

Sadly, the big 6 haven’t responded to their new title with much enthusiasm. That’s because being a gatekeeper means you’re subjected to a raft of new rules drawn up by EU officials that came into effect on Thursday. 

The rules (also known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA)), are part of the EU’s sworn vow to create a “safe digital space” for us—although, some critics say they’re doing the exact opposite.

And these rules won’t just affect Europeans because other countries including Japan, Britain, Mexico, South Korea, Australia, Brazil, India, and the U.S., are all gearing up to pass equivalent policies.

What this means — we’ll all start seeing changes both as consumers and as businesses across these platforms as they begin to adapt to the new demands. 

But what are those changes, exactly?

Well, they fall into 3 main buckets: 

1. No More Devilish Defaults 

The DMA says that platforms are no longer allowed to offer their own services by default. For example, Apple can’t automatically give you Apple Music without offering you Spotify and Google can’t automatically offer you Chrome without making you aware of competing browsers. 

We’ll start seeing screens such as these…

Another example causing plenty of drama is Apple being forced to offer other App Stores to European users beyond just its own official store. 

Apple’s response to this policy has been scathing and insists that it introduces safety and quality issues for consumers. 

2. No More Self-Serving Searches 

The DMA bans platforms from giving preference to their own products and services in search rankings. Google will now look different for Europeans as certain features disappear and others are introduced. 

For example, users may see certain search chips disappear…

Meanwhile, Google will be forced to show results from other search providers…

The big 6 will also be under scrutiny in terms of how they advertise their own products on their own platforms such as Amazon’s own product range. 

3. No More Data Dominance 

Finally, the big 6 are being forced to cough up more data to its users and become more compatible with other platforms. 

Users will see more dashboards, analytics, and APIs (connective bridges between apps), and in one of the more bizarre moves, WhatsApp and Messenger now have to let users send messages to people who aren’t using WhatsApp and Messenger. 

WHAT THIS MEANS MOVING FORWARD 

• There’s growing bad blood between the EU and big tech. The EU seems more trigger happy than ever when it comes to passing new laws and each one brings a fresh set of headaches for tech companies.

• In the short term, there will be lots of changes to how we interact with the 6 gatekeepers, both as consumers and as businesses that sell and interact on the platforms. 

• More lawsuits and drama. The changes are emboldening antitrust lawsuits and fines: Apple was fined almost $2 billion right after the DMA was rolled out as the EU ganged up sided with Spotify during their recent dispute, and Google is being sued for anticompetitive practices. 

BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN 

• Will any of this actually improve the lives of consumers and businesses who rely on these platforms? Or is the EU just trying to bias the market away from US-based platforms in favor of EU companies? 

• Will the big 6 continue to listen? There are already signs of rebellion: Apple’s compliance report comes across as notably irate and the company has already initiated appeals processes. 

SNIPPETS

Disney's California hotel workers aren't finding the magic in their paychecks. Over 100 hotel workers banded together to file a class action lawsuit against the company on Thursday. They say that Disney underpaid them below the state's mandatory minimum wage and failed to pay them overtime—a violation of California law. The workers are demanding that Disney conjure up one million dollars in back payments.

Elon Musk's X scores a major win in the copyright ring against music industry heavyweights including Sony Music. A Nashville judge ruled that X cannot be held liable for its users uploading copyrighted music. X may still end up facing the music in court for not taking down copyrighted music fast enough for paying subscribers, however.

Texans can’t access pornographic websites unless they prove they’re adults by verifying their age. That’s because Texas’s attempt to appeal an age-verification mandate failed in the Federal Appeals Court. The court emphasized that online verification is equivalent to requiring in-person ID to buy pornographic magazines. Yee-awh ;( 

Shein was fashionably late to disclosing key corporate details in the UK, slowing down their reported plans to list on the London Stock Exchange. All UK companies are required to declare a “person with significant control”—an individual who has primary ownership. But Shein listed a company based in Singapore as its PSC—which the UK government saw as a red flag.

Google had a spy in their midst. Linwei Ding has been accused of syphoning off Google's AI infrastructure secrets to Chinese companies. If found guilty, he could face 10 years in prison and a $250k fine on each criminal count. 

The U.S. congress will vote on a bill next week regarding TikTok. The bill would give TikTok’s parent company ByteDance an ultimatum: sell TikTok within 6 months or get banned from the States. The goal of the bill is to allow users to keep using TikTok while alleviating concerns around ByteDance’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party.

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