Europe is cracking down on Big Tech. This is what will change when you sign on::Starting Friday, Europeans will see their online life change.

  • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    TL;DR bot seems to on summer vacation now, so I had to ask Bing to summarize the article for me.

    According to an article on Tech Xplore, the European Union has introduced a new set of digital regulations called the Digital Services Act. The act aims to protect European users’ privacy, transparency, and removal of harmful or illegal content. The act will affect big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, TikTok, and Amazon. The act will allow users to turn off AI-recommended videos and personalized search results. Users can choose to view content only from people they follow. Search results will be based only on the words they type. Users should find it easier to report a post, video or comment that breaks the law or violates a platform’s rules so that it can be reviewed and taken down if required. Affected service providers will have until 1 January 2024 to comply with its provisions.

    • undetermined@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Really looking forward to this. When I search videos on youtube, I get like 10 videos on the topic, then some videos from a completely unrelated topic and after that only videos from the “home” page. It’s very annoying and I’m really looking forward to turn all of this off.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Especially in search results this is going to be huge. The home page on YT can be useful if you’re mindful of your clicks and steer the recommendation algorithm in a very specific direction. So there are pros and cons to this algorithm thing, so you might not want to disable it everywhere.

      • donslaught@unilem.org
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        1 year ago

        It probably will and will depend on whether or not it makes financial sense for the company to invest in doing things like making software that they have to write, test, and deploy, possibly in multiple versions for multiple regions. The short answer is probably not and so any changes made too confirm to European law will by default also be the case in the US.

    • Psythik@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I hope this happens to YouTube in the US.

      I’m so sick and tired of the “algorithm”, always suggesting videos that are just barely entertaining enough to keep me watching. Let’s just go back to the old days where the front page consisted of popular videos and content from people you’re subscribed to. Create a separate, independent “discover” section for people who like algorithms, but don’t make it the main focus.