New E.U. Rules Affect Google, Amazon, etc., Require More Transparency

[engine]

New agreements in the E.U. will require more transparency for many tech firms over how they rank their own products and services.

Around 7,000 companies are affected, and include Amazon, Bing, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo.

The rules include a blacklist of unfair trading practices, require companies to set up an internal system to handle complaints and allow businesses to group together to sue platforms.

“Our target is to outlaw some of the most unfair practices and create a benchmark for transparency, at the same time safeguarding the great advantages of online platforms both for consumers and for businesses,” EU digital chief Andrus Ansip said.

[reuters.com...]

[heisje]

Need to see more details - and about the teeth, where are the teeth.
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[LifeinAsia]

Need to see more details

Agree- need some transparency about these new transparency requirements. (For some reason, I'm unable to open the article- it keeps crashing my browser.)

[Selen]

A step in the right direction. There are at least two popular "reviews" services in the UK that turned "consumer reviews" into a joke because they allow the reviewed companies to choose which "reviews" should appear in public and which should not.

[heisje]

Long anticipated good warning shot. The Message: more to come if you don't get it - tidy up, don't force us to get nasty. Hope FTC may send a similar Message, but not holding my breath.
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[engine]

Here's the detail from the E.U. on the fairness of platform-to-business (P2B) trading practices in the online platform economy.
[ec.europa.eu...]

[heisje]

Very useful link, thanks.
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[tangor]

The fun thing will be seeing what kind of transparency is offered from the opaque black box crowd. EU has yet to corral the tech giants, but they are getting closer.

[engine]

It'll be interesting to see where this goes as it's not yet legislation.
Forcing a business to reveal too much about its proprietary systems is not going to go down well.