Apple, Meta and Co. in the EU: Withdrawing love for deregulation?
Big tech companies cannot cope with the new EU laws. Using users' displeasure as leverage could backfire, says Malte Kirchner.
(Image: artjazz/Shutterstock.com)
It is somewhat reminiscent of the controversial collective punishments that once existed in schools: Because one person disrupts the lesson, the whole class has to miss out on the promised field trip. On Friday, Apple surprisingly announced that its AI functions under the umbrella term Apple Intelligence, iPhone mirroring on the Mac and remote maintenance for iPad and iPhone via SharePlay will probably not be made available to users in the European Union this year. The announcement reads more like a forewarning than a concrete announcement. It remains to be seen whether this will actually happen in the fall. The reason given is regulatory uncertainty as a result of the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA). However, it is questionable whether the functions actually cannot be published due to the law.
Big tech companies as teachers who are above it all and only want the best for their students and the EU as a class clown and troublemaker that only complicates everything - these are precisely the images that the announcements from marketing departments are projecting into the minds of EU citizens these days. By (threatening to) abandon functions in the EU, the aim is apparently to exert pressure on the EU via customers. Meta has already played out the game of withdrawal of love due to EU laws such as GDPR, DSA, DMA, Ai Act and the like with its Threads social network. This only came to the EU six months later and new functions, such as the Fediverse, are still being added with a delay. Meta is currently withholding its chatbot Meta AI from EU users, because of EU laws. Meanwhile, Google and Microsoft are remaining surprisingly quiet - as they were already used to regulation, perhaps they prefer to keep quiet and, with a few exceptions, simply watch the others work their way through the EU.
A payback?
For Apple, which traditionally tends to prefer silence when it comes to political and regulatory issues, the current development is a remarkable move, albeit not the first of its kind this year. Back in the spring, iPhone users experienced a sometimes confusing public interplay between the iPhone manufacturer and the European Union, whereby the latter tended to operate behind closed doors in Apple style.
At the provisional end of this dispute was the opening of the App Store, which provides for the alternative marketplaces prescribed by the EU and the download of individual apps from the web. However, it recently became known that the EU has its problems with the core technology fee, notarization and other mechanisms used by Apple to retain some residual control. The proximity of the announcement of the results of the investigation to Apple's announcement of iOS 18 led some to suspect a tit-for-tat response from Apple.
As is usual with such investigations, it will take at least a year before there is any movement in the case and, in the best case, the fronts are clarified. Apple doesn't have that much time with iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS 15: the new versions are due to be rolled out to users as updates in the fall - and, according to Apple, will usher in a new age of AI. Currently, the signs are that the EU public could be partially excluded from this - not because the EU wants it that way, but because Apple is holding back the functions "as a precaution". Apparently, Cupertino fears that the EU could take offense at the fact that Apple AI is allowed to operate on its own at system level, that remote control other than SharePlay is excluded and that iPhone mirroring is only possible with Apple software. On the positive side, we could also say that it indicates that Cupertino has developed an awareness of what is not permitted in the EU.
No reason to panic
For the moment, however, there is no reason for users to panic. It was already clear at the WWDC developer conference: Apple Intelligence will only be released in US English this year anyway, and some things will still be missing everywhere at the beginning. The other two functions for remote control and remote maintenance are useful, but the excitement makes them seem more important than they really are. A sober view: EU users aren't missing out on that much at all, but on the other hand, there isn't quite as much left of the updates without these functions. Presently, only the brave ones who download the developer betas onto their devices feel the pinch anyway.
The fact that Apple is already publicly declaring the EU exception is a reaction to an announcement that has not been made. The EU has not yet publicly commented on Apple's new products - and it will not do so until they reach the user. So Apple is practicing anticipatory obedience or an otherwise unknown fearfulness. Long-time Apple customers rightly point out that Apple's operating systems have long included similar functions, such as machine learning and iPhone mirroring via QuickTime on the Mac, which no one has taken offense at so far. Why should the EU suddenly rush into this, even though it has apparently had no problem with it so far?
The inability to adhere to rules
And so the unsuspecting EU citizen, who in future would simply like to use his iPhone to correct texts using AI, help his grandma remotely with her iPad or save himself the trouble of reaching for his iPhone on his Mac, suddenly finds himself in the middle of a political power game. At least among some contemporaries and influencers, this creates resentment towards the EU – an effect that Apple is in any case willingly accepting, perhaps even challenging. However, if the intention was to exert pressure on the EU via users, it is more likely to backfire: many voices in online comments read as if some have only become aware of the need to regulate the big tech companies as a result of Apple and Meta's brash approach. Meta is not making any friends with its approach either. It is almost unbelievable that such large companies with their immense resources do not want to be in a position to solve regulatory problems.
However, the pressure created by steps such as those taken by Apple and Meta is much greater for the companies themselves than for the EU. What will happen in September when the new iPhones, and with them the new software, arrive? Will the collective resentment towards the EU then be so great that Apple succeeds in doing what Microsoft and Meta have failed to do: tear the DMA apart at the seams? Or will it be the case that Apple shoots itself in the foot and torpedoes its iPhone sales? Who would buy a new device for applications they won't get, and in the knowledge that they will become a political pawn?
Hoping for common sense
Experience has shown that collective punishment and actions that look like it rarely result in the masses turning against the person they are aimed at. As a rule, the resentment ends up being directed at the person who issued it. The troublemaker in the class tends to gain sympathy, the teacher is the bad guy. That's why such threats of punishment usually end with a happy ending: everyone has learned their lesson and the excursion can still go ahead.
We can only hope that a consensus will eventually be reached in the struggle over the complex set of rules that will give Big Tech the clarity and legal certainty it is hoping for, while at the same time preserving the core idea behind this legislation: that an increasingly digital society can only function in the future if Big Tech companies cannot do what they want with us users.
(mki)