EU Consumers confirm need for effective interoperability in DMA

In latest Interoperability News toot there was mention of this article: European consumers confirm need for effective interoperability in DMA – Interoperability News

It refers to some interesting work by the European Consumer Organization BEUC:

The factsheet mentions what the proposed Digital Markets Act would do for consumers, quoting…

The DMA would prohibit gatekeepers from using a number of unfair practices that harm consumers, such as:

  • blocking users from un-installing pre-installed software or apps

  • mixing user’s personal data collected on one of their core platform services with personal data collected on another of their services or personal data from third parties

  • prohibiting services using a gatekeeper’s app store from selling discounted subscriptions bought directly from the service provider’s own website rather than the app store

  • discriminating against other providers’ apps on their app stores or prohibiting competing app stores on devices

  • forcing customers to sign up for other core platform services in order to access the specific service they wanted to use (e.g. consumers wishing to use Instagram could not be obliged to have a Facebook account)

  • gathering data on their business customers to ascertain how best to compete with them and whether to themselves market their customers’ most successful products

  • ranking their own products or services more favourably than third party services e.g. in search results• locking in customers by“technically restricting” users from switching away from default apps and services

And to top it off they wrote a nice blog post about all this: