ReportWire

Tag: The Commission

  • EU charges Meta and TikTok over failures to tackle illegal content

    The European Commission has found that Meta and TikTok had violated rules under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and is now giving them the chance to comply if they don’t want to be fined up to 6 percent of their total worldwide annual turnover. According to the Commission, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have “put in place burdensome procedures and tools” for researchers who want to request access to public data. This means they’re stuck with incomplete or unreliable information if they want to do research on topics like how minors are exposed to illegal or harmful content online. “Allowing researchers access to platforms’ data is an essential transparency obligation under the DSA,” the Commission wrote.

    In addition, the Commission is charging Meta over the lack of a user-friendly mechanism that would allow users to easily report posts with illegal content, such as child sexual abuse materials. The Commission explained that Facebook and Instagram use mechanisms that require several steps to be able to flag posts, and they use dark interface designs that make reporting confusing and dissuading. All those factors are in breach of DSA rules that require online platforms to give EU users easy-to-use mechanisms to be able to report illegal content.

    Under the DSA, users must also be able to challenge social networks’ decisions to remove their posts or suspend their accounts. The Commission found that neither Facebook nor Instagram allow users to explain their sides or provide evidence to substantiate their appeals, which limits the effectiveness of the appeal process.

    Meta and TikTok will be able to examine the Commission’s investigation files and to reply in writing about its findings. They’ll also have the opportunity to implement changes to comply with DSA rules, and it’s only if the Commission decides they’re non-compliant that they can be fined up to 6 percent of their global annual turnover. Meta disagreed that it had breached DSA rules, according to Financial Times. “In the European Union, we have introduced changes to our content reporting options, appeals process, and data access tools since the DSA came into force and are confident that these solutions match what is required under the law in the EU,” it said in a statement. Meanwhile, TikTok said it was reviewing the Commission’s findings but that “requirements to ease data safeguards place the DSA and GDPR in direct tension.” It’s asking regulators for guidance on “how these obligations should be reconciled.”

    Mariella Moon

    Source link

  • Microsoft escapes EU antitrust fine after unbundling Teams

    Microsoft is no longer in trouble with the European Commission, at least when it comes to Teams. The commission has accepted the changes and commitments the company made in response to its concerns related to Microsoft’s bundling of its Teams collaboration platform with its other apps. This particular antitrust saga started years ago when Slack filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft, claiming that it illegally bundled its work chat competitor with the popular Office suite. The commission opened a formal investigation into the matter in 2023 and found in 2024 that Microsoft did indeed violate antitrust laws.

    “Microsoft may have granted Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice whether or not to acquire access to Teams when they subscribe to their SaaS productivity applications,” the commission said at the time. “This advantage may have been further exacerbated by interoperability limitations between Teams’ competitors and Microsoft’s offerings.” The company was facing a fine equivalent to 10 percent of its annual worldwide turnover.

    Even before the commission published its preliminary finding, Microsoft already unbundled Teams from Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites across the European Union. However, the commission found the changes it implemented “insufficient to address its concerns.” So Microsoft made several commitments to avoid a fine, including offering customers in Europe versions of its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites without Teams. Those versions are sold at an “appreciably lower price.” The company also committed not to offer discount rates on Teams or on suites with Teams included. Microsoft gave Teams’ competitors “effective interoperability” with some of its products and services, as well, and allowed them to embed Office apps in their own products. In addition, it allowed customers in Europe to extract their Teams messaging data for use in competing services.

    The commission tested those commitments between May and June this year. In response to the commission’s test results, Microsoft further increased the price difference between the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites with Teams and those without by 50 percent. The company also has to display suites options without Teams if it advertises its suites options with the messaging app. “The commitments offered by Microsoft will remain in force for seven years, except for the commitments related to interoperability and data portability which will remain in force for ten years,” the commission wrote. A trustee will be monitoring Microsoft’s implementation and will be making sure it remains true to its commitments within that timeframe.

    Mariella Moon

    Source link

  • Review for Piedmont power line will take until at least February 2027, Maryland regulators say

    Frederick H. Hoover, chair of the Maryland Public Service Commission, which said Thursday that it will take until at least February 2027 to complete its review of the controversial Piedmont power line. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)

    Maryland regulators will take until at least February 2027 before they can issue a final ruling on the proposed Piedmont power line, according to a schedule set Thursday by the Maryland Public Service Commission.

    That schedule is almost a year longer than PSEG Renewable Transmission, the New Jersey-based company planning the line, had hoped for. The company had said that the PSC  would need to issue its decision by the end of March 2026 in order for it to meet a deadline from the region’s electric grid operator to bring the controversial line in-service by June 2027.

    The grid operator, PJM Interconnection, has warned that the 67-mile transmission line is among the projects that are necessary in order for it to avoid power failures such as blackouts amid surging demand, thanks in part to the rise of data centers, particularly in Virginia.

    But the PSC said in a news release Thursday, in essence, that the grid can wait while it takes the time needed for it to fully evaluate the project.

    “In adopting this schedule that includes a longer timeline than PSEG had requested, the Commission has confidence that PJM, the region’s grid operator, will efficiently maintain the grid during the duration of the Commission’s review of PSEG’s application,” read the statement from the five-member Commission, a five-member commission.

    The commissioners also argued that PSEG submitted its application later than expected — on Dec. 31, 2024, rather than in the third quarter of 2024 as originally planned — “leaving less time for the Commission to carry out its review,” the news release said.

    At issue is whether or not the commission grants PSEG a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, which would allow them to construct the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project across northern Maryland. In a statement Thursday, the transmission company said that the power line “is a necessary infrastructure project to ensure grid reliability and affordability for Maryland ratepayers.”

    “We have received the Public Service Commission’s procedural schedule, and our team is presently conducting a review to determine the appropriate next steps,” wrote William J. Smith, a PSEG spokesperson.

    The project, a large transmission line planned to stretch 67 miles through rural parts of Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick counties, has attracted considerable opposition from residents, who argue that it will tear through natural lands — all in the name of shipping power through the heart of Maryland to a power station near the Virginia border.

    In a statement Thursday, Stop MPRP,  a coalition formed to protest the project, applauded the schedule proposed by the PSC.

    “PSEG asked for a rushed timeline that would have forced a decision by early 2026 — before complete studies of farmland, forests, wetlands, and community impacts could even be done,” the statement read. “The PSC rejected that approach.”

    The coalition of property owners and other project opponents have also balked at PSEG’s attempts to conduct land surveys for the project, arguing that the surveys represent the company prematurely invoking eminent domain before it has the approval of Maryland regulators.

    Federal courts have so far disagreed. A U.S. District Court judge in Baltimore has issued orders allowing PSEG to go onto the property of uncooperative landowoners to complete its surveys on hundreds of properties. Many landowners have appealed the decision in the ongoing case.

    SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

    After the judge’s order, PSEG argued that a handful of landowners were continuing to resist the surveys, and requested back-up from U.S. marshals. But after most of those landowners pledged to allow surveyors onto their property, a judge ruled that the marshals would not be necessary.

    The schedule released Thursday calls on PSEG to complete the surveys and submit an updated environmental review for the project by March. Involved parties, including landowners, Maryland’s ratepayer advocate and experts from the Maryland Power Plant Research Program, would file briefs with the PSC by September 2026, followed by two weeks of public hearings in the affected coiunties.

    Evidentiary hearings would come in December 2026, and the parties would then submit post-hearing briefs by February 2027. The PSC would make its decision some time after reviewing those briefs, although it isn’t clear how long that could take. The schedule could be amended later for “good cause,” said Tori Leonard, a spokesperson for the PSC.

    Source link

  • EU fines Google $3.5 billion over adtech antitrust violations

    The European Commission has announced that it will fine Google €2.95 billion, or around $3.5 billion, for violating European Union antitrust laws and “distorting competition in the advertising technology industry.” The decision follows from earlier in 2025, where a US federal judge concluded that Google maintains a monopoly in online advertising technology.

    Google displays ads in search results, but it also has a dominant position as a software provider for online advertisers and publishers looking to sell ad space and place ads. The Commission’s main issue is with the way Google’s ad buying tools (Google Ads and DV 360) interact with its ad exchange software (AdX) and ad publisher servers (DFP) in seemingly preferential ways. Google appears to favor its AdX ad exchange by “informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction,” according to the Commission. It also found that “Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX,” maintaining the dominance of Google’s ad exchange even if an alternative is a better option for advertisers.

    The Commission is giving Google 60 days to share how it plans to address those issues or face an “appropriate remedy” for violating antitrust law. That could just be the fine, but might also include a forced sale of some or all of Google’s adtech business.

    Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, shared that the company will appeal the decision in the following statement provided to Engadget:

    “The European Commission’s decision about our ad tech services is wrong and we will appeal. It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money. There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”

    $3.5 billion is a staggering amount of money, but it’s not technically the most Google’s been charged for violating EU laws. In 2018, the company was for forcing mobile network operators to pre-install Google apps on phones. Though Google has been under an increasing amount of scrutiny in the last decade for its business practices, it so far hasn’t faced many structural remedies for what has been called anticompetitive behavior.

    For example, a US court found Google was in 2024, but a judge that the company wouldn’t have to sell off Chrome or stop paying Apple to make Google the iPhone’s default search engine. EU regulators have historically been more persistent than their US counterparts, and the European Commission is for at least one other advertising-related issue, but it remains to be seen if there’s any punishment that will actually faze the company.

    Ian Carlos Campbell

    Source link