According to monthly user counts revealed by the businesses on Thursday that exceeded the EU threshold, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc., and Twitter will be subject to tighter EU online content laws.
Companies with more than 45 million users fall under the new regulations known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), which classifies them as extremely large online platforms and subjects them to requirements including risk management and external, independent auditing
. A code of conduct must be adopted, and they must also share data with researchers and authorities.
Online platforms and search engines have until February 17 to reveal their monthly active user counts. The deadline for every major web platform to follow the guidelines is four months, after which they risk fines.
Based on an evaluation of the last 45 days, Twitter claimed to have 100.9 million average monthly users in the EU.
Users can access Alphabet’s services whether they are signed in to an account or not by supplying two sets of numbers: one for recipients whose accounts are being used, and another for recipients whose accounts are being used when they are not.
A total of 278.6 million people were reported to be logged in on a monthly average to Google Maps, 274.6 million to Google Play, 332 million to Google Search, 74.9 million to Shopping, and 401.7 million to YouTube.
According to Meta Platforms, by the end of 2022, there will be approximately 250 million average monthly active users on Instagram and 255 million average monthly active users on Facebook in the EU.