ByteDance, owner of Meta and TikTok, is not in favor of paying the European Union to regulate them. Companies have challenged monitoring fees set by EU moderators, who are now required to monitor Meta, TikTok and other major platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA), Political reports. Meta first announced its action, with ByteDance following suit a day later.
Under the current agreement, all designated companies must share the 45.2 million euros ($48.7 million) that EU regulators arguing is necessary to properly supervise the 20 Very large online platforms and two very large online search engines (VLOSE). Each regulated platform has 45 million users or more and its financial contribution is based on the size of this number. They also cannot owe more than 0.05% of its net profits for 2022. However, companies like Amazon and Pinterest which reported little or no profits will owe nothing. Meta, on the other hand, received a bill for 11 million euros ($11.9 million) under the current deal. ByteDance has not publicly announced how much it owes.
Meta challenges European Union regulators' methodology for choosing each company's fees. “Currently, companies that make a loss don't have to pay, even if they have a large user base or pose a greater regulatory burden, meaning some companies pay nothing, leaving others to pay a disproportionate amount of the total,” he said. » remarked the Meta spokesperson. Failure to comply with these fees could result in a fine of up to six percent of a company's global turnover.
THE DSA came into effect in 2023, with Meta and ByteDance's VLOP designations sitting alongside other major sites, like Google and X, formerly known as Twitter. Besides fees, VLOPs must comply with specific regulations such as transparent advertising and content moderation, data sharing with the European Commission, and cooperation with an annual independent audit.