Tech giants including Facebook, Google, Twitter and TikTok face stricter online content rules in the European Union due to their huge number of users.
The new rules, known as the Digital Services Act , classify companies with more than 45 million users as very large online platforms and require them to do risk management and external and independent auditing.
The European Commission had given online platforms and search engines until today to publish their monthly active users. Those labelled as VLOPs have four months to comply with the rules or risk fines. Twitter this week said it had 100.9 million average monthly users in the EU, based on an estimation of the last 45 days. Google owner Alphabet provided one set of numbers based on users' accounts and another set based on signed-out recipients, saying users can access its services whether they sign in to an account or are signed out. It said the average monthly number of signed-in users totalled 278.6 million at Google Maps, 274.6 million at Google Play, 332 million at Google Search, 74.9 million at Shopping and 401.7 million at YouTube. Apple said only its App Store built for its iPhones, with more than 45 million monthly users, qualified as a very large online platform. But it will also apply the same rules to the App Store for iPads, Mac computers, Apple Watch and TV, and to its Apple Books e-books and podcasts paid subscriptions. "Apple intends, on an entirely voluntary basis, to align each of the existing versions of the App Store with the existing DSA requirements for VLOPs," it said on its site. Amazon said it had more than 45 million users in the EU, while Microsoft said its Bing search engine had 107 million average monthly users in the last six months of 2022. Alibaba Group Holding's e-commerce site AliExpress said its average monthly active users in the EU was above 45 million from August 1 last year to January 31 this year.Ebay said it was below the EU user threshold. Meta Platforms has said it had 255 million average monthly active users on Facebook in the EU and about 250 million average monthly active users on Instagram in the last six months of 2022.
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