Elections have consequences. In July 2019, the European Parliament elected Ursula von der Leyen to become president of the European Commission. Under her leadership, between 2019 and 2024, the Commission successfully shepherded through a landmark package of regulations to rein in Big Tech, among them the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Market Act (DMA), and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). At the time, many in Europe hoped that the laws would become a model for other jurisdictions along the lines of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), EU laws designed to safeguard people’s information online. But the DSA is unlikely to serve as the global standard for platform governance, nor is the United States likely to import any lessons from the DSA. That was true before the elections, and even more so now.
Truth and Consequences: The Post-Election Regulatory Landscape for Big Tech
