The United Kingdom today announced that a new regulatory unit will be established to regulate online giants such as Facebook and Google and improve their transparency in the use of user information and personalized advertising.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said in a statement today that the new Digital Markets Unit “will manage the online platforms that currently dominate the market, such as Google and Facebook.
The purpose of the unit is “to ensure that consumers and small businesses are not disadvantaged.
The Digital Markets Unit was created because the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in July that existing regulations were no longer adequate and that a new regulatory unit would be needed to regulate the online giants that profit from digital advertising.
The CMA has not taken direct action against Facebook and Google, but it supports a new law.
UK Business Secretary Alok Sharma said, “Our new unit to promote competition in the digital marketplace will ensure that consumers have choice, meaning smaller companies will not be excluded.”
The U.K. agrees that online platforms bring great benefits to business and society, but that “too much power is concentrated in a small number of technology companies,” which is detrimental to industry growth and innovation, as well as having a “negative impact on the general public.
The goal of the new regulations is to make these tech giants more transparent about the services they provide and how they use consumer data.
According to the British government, consumers will be able to choose whether they want to see personalized ads or not.
The new department, which will be launched next April, will have the power to “suspend, ban and reverse the decisions of tech giants” and to order them to take action or impose fines on them.
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