On March 24th EU governing bodies announced that they had reached a deal on the most sweeping legislation to target big tech in Europe known as the digital markets act DMA. Seen as an ambitious law with far-reaching implications the most eye-catching measure in the bill would require that every large tech agency defined as having a market capitalization of more than 75 billion and a user base of more than 45 million people in the EY create products that are interoperable with smaller platforms. For messaging apps that would mean letting end-to-end encrypted services like Whatsapp mingle with less secure protocols like SMS which security experts worry will undermine hard won gains in the field of message encryption. The main focus of the DMA is a class of large tech agencies termed gatekeepers defined by the size of their audience or revenue and by extension the structural power they are able to wield against smaller competitors. Through the latest regulations, the government is hoping to break open some of the services provided by such agencies to permit smaller businesses to complete. That could mean letting users install third-party apps outside of the app store letting outside sellers rank higher in Amazon searches or requiring messaging apps to send texts across multiple protocols.
Read More: New EU law could require iMessage and WhatsApp to work with other smaller platforms
