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Meta announced today the introduction of a cheaper and simpler than in the EU version of “pay or consent” (subscription for no ads) for Facebook and Instagram for UK users. This follows Meta’s discussions with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which issued a guardedly positive statement about the development.

Apple has issued a sharply critical statement regarding the impact of the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) and its impact on Apple products in the EU. The company says EU users will see delays to features such as AirPods’ live translation and iPhone Mirroring on macOS.

In a new webinar convened by Oles Andriychuk (University of Exeter), I debated two competition law scholars (Simonetta Vezzoso, University of Trento, and Marco Botta, European University Institute) on the topic of the EU Commission’s DMA enforcement decision against Meta (“pay or consent”).

Much has been said about the so-called “Brussels Effect”—that is, the European Union’s animating conceit that its mission is to make rules for the entire world. Without irony, the EU has embraced the meme that others innovate, while the EU regulates.

Over the past two weeks, the European Commission held a second round of public workshops with the designated “gatekeeper” companies Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Bytedance, Meta, and Microsoft. Having analyzed the first round in April 2024 from a privacy and security perspective, I now examine what happened in Brussels during these follow-up sessions.

Today, I joined Eric Seufert for my seventh (!) appearance on the Mobile Dev Memo podcast[1] to discuss the European Commission’s April decision on Meta’s “pay or consent” model. The catalyst for our conversation was the recent release of the full text of this decision, which provides crucial insights into the Commission’s approach to enforcing the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The European Commission published the text of its April Decision on Meta’s “pay or consent” scheme as implemented until November 2024. Since then, Meta has made significant changes to Facebook and Instagram in the EU, introducing a free “less-personalized ads” option.

Ben Thompson argues that Apple should “make its models – both local and in Private Cloud Compute – fully accessible to developers to make whatever they want,” rather than limiting them to the “cutesy-yet-annoying frameworks” like Genmoji.

On 27 May, Meta plans to begin AI training using public EU user data from Facebook and Instagram. Yesterday, Meta’s lead GDPR regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission (IDPC) published a statement highlighting the additional safeguards adopted by Meta since the previously paused plan from early 2024.

The European Commission issued a significant noncompliance decision earlier today, finding the “consent or pay” model that Meta implemented from March 2024 to November 2024 for its Facebook and Instagram services breached key obligations imposed on designated gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).