EDRi-gram, 7 May 2025

What has the EDRis network been up to over the past two weeks? Find out the latest digital rights news in our bi-weekly newsletter. In this edition: Apple & Meta fined for breaching DMA, civil society urges EU to act against Hungary’s pride ban, & more!

By EDRi · May 7, 2025

Dear supporters,

We may not be following the papal conclave to find out who the next pope is going to be, but we’re surely paying attention to which tech giants will be next to face the music thanks to the EU’s digital rulebook. Two weeks ago, the European Commission slammed tech giants Apple and Meta with fines for breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Meta was fined for its coercive consent model ‘Pay or Okay’ on its platforms, and Apple was fined for its restrictive app store rules.

While it was great to see the Commission showing some teeth against the stronghold of Big Tech companies, we wonder if the low fines – often not even a pittance for these corporations – will be dissuasive enough for them to actually change.

In April, we, together with Bits of Freedom, Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, and Convocation Design + Research also wielded the power of EU’s digital laws by filing a complaint against Meta, which is violating the Digital Services Act (DSA) by making it hard for people to choose news feeds that are not based on profiling. Meta’s toxic, profiling-based content feeds are affecting our lives and well-being, and we deserve to take control back over our online experiences.

Instances like these make it clearer than ever that EU’s digital laws like the DSA, DMA and others have great potential to address the dominance of tech giants and the consequences on our democracy and fundamental rights.

 

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Object to Meta training AI with your personal data

Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information

By end of May 2025, Meta plans to start using the data of Facebook and Instagram users as AI training datasets. Personal data will then be used to train the company’s AI-based services. The Irish Data Protection Authority, lead supervisory authority for Meta in the EU, has intervened to – drum roll – make it easier to object. This opt-out is not the ban many would have hoped for and puts the burden on individual users’ shoulders. But at least Hamburg’s Data Protection Commissioner has published a guide on how to object. If this is relevant for you, do it now.

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Gutting AI transparency in the name of deregulation will not help Europe

Zusanna Warso, EDRi member, Open Future & Maximilian Gahntz, Mozilla Foundation

The EU’s rush to simplify AI regulation risks weakening transparency rules. This regulatory shift threatens core principles needed for responsible AI development. Zuzanna Warso and Maximilian Gahntz write an important contribution about the European Commission’s deregulation agenda and argue that it will not help Europe Read it now.

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This is what a digital coup looks like

Carole Cadwalladr, TED

Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr decries the rise of the “broligarchy” – the powerful tech executives who are using their global digital platforms to amass unprecedented geopolitical power, dismantling democracy and enabling authoritarian control across the world. She calls to resist data harvesting and mass surveillance, and to support others in digital disobedience. Watch her talk now.

 

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Meta’s AI chatbots are a disaster

404 Media Podcast

The 404 Media team unpacks recent stories on how Meta’s AI chatbots were used to create pseudo-therapists hallucinating fabricated degrees, potentially misleading people in need of actual care. (Maybe now you want to revisit the Recommended DO section from this EDRi-gram.) They also cover how wildly unethical AI-powered research targeted on Reddit users. Listen to the podcast now.

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