Gaming, social media and e-commerce platforms are facing a new wave of sweeping European Union rules that aim to make “your online experience fairer”. The new Digital Fairness Bill (DFA), published on Wednesday by the European Commission, aims to combat practices that exploit consumers into spending more time and money online, including misleading pricing or availability, addictive design features such as in-game loot boxes, undisclosed influencer marketing, and more.
“The law will protect consumers of all ages who buy and search for goods or services online,” the European Commission said in a briefing. “It will also mean fairer competition for companies, which hope to save European consumers up to 13.7 billion euros ($15.1 billion) a year. »
The scope of the proposed restrictions is broad and could significantly impact significant parts of the online digital landscape, from “rabbit hole” algorithms on YouTube, TikTok and Meta platforms, to AI chatbots and apps like DuoLingo that relentlessly nudge users to continue interacting with them. Some gaming organizations have already criticized the DFA’s proposal, describing its restrictions on virtual currencies, loot boxes and the offering of microtransactions to minors as “unworkable, unjustified and disproportionate.”
As this is a draft proposal, the FDFA will be subject to various approvals by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union before being adopted, and its current measures could be modified or removed entirely as part of this process. When (or if) it comes into force, the European Commission says companies that break the regulations could face fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover.
“Our consumer protection rules will help ensure that businesses compete on the merits of their products and services – not on their ability to exploit consumers or evade the rules. We are not making business more difficult. We are making unfair commercial activity more difficult,” EU Commissioner Michael McGrath said in his remarks following the FDFA’s draft publication. “We cannot protect 21st century consumers with rules that have not kept pace with the 21st century economy. »
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