The European Union has identified 19 tech giants for online content rules

BRUSSELS, April 25 (Reuters) – Five subsidiaries of Alphabet (GOOGL.O), two units of Meta Platforms (METAO), two companies from Microsoft (MSFT.O), Twitter and Alibaba’s (9988.HK) AliExpress are among the 19. EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Tuesday that online content rules are prominent in the European Union.

The rules, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), require companies to conduct risk management, conduct external and independent audits, share data with authorities and researchers, and adopt a code of conduct by August.

The 19 companies include Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping, YouTube, Meta Facebook, Instagram, Amazon (AMZN.O) Marketplace, and Apple’s App Store.

The others are Microsoft’s Linkedin and Bing units, booking.com (BKNG.O), Pinterest (PINS.N), Snap Inc (SNAP.N) Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia and Zalando (ZALG.DE ) and Alibaba’s (9988.HK) AliExpress.

“We consider that these 19 online platforms and search engines have become systemically relevant and have special responsibilities for making the Internet safer,” Breton told reporters.

Companies will have to do more to tackle misinformation, provide more protection and choice for users and ensure stronger protections for children or risk fines of up to 6% of their global sales.

Britton said he was checking to see if four to five more companies fall under the DSA, with a decision expected in the next few weeks.

Breton singled out Facebook’s content moderation system for criticism for its role in building opinions on key issues.

“Now that Facebook is positioned as a very large online platform, Meta needs to carefully investigate the system and fix it where needed as quickly as possible,” he said.

Twitter and TikTok also appeared on Breton’s radar.

“At the invitation of Elon Musk, my team and I will conduct a live stress test at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco,” he said.

“We’re also committed to doing a stress test with TikTok which has also shown interest. So I’m looking forward to inviting Bytedance headquarters to better understand the origin of Tiktok,” Breton said.

Fu Yun Che’s report

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