Tech Takeover: Digital Fairness Act

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (1:00)

The Hard Shoulder with Ciara Kelly and Shane Coleman on Newstalk with Kia.

Shane Coleman (1:08)

Okay, Jess Kelly joins us once again for the tech takeover. Jess, I don't know what the Digital Fairness Act is.

Jess Kelly (1:16)

I like that, the throwback. Does everyone remember that ad, that one ad that we can all quote?

This is a proposal for yet another piece of EU legislation. It was proposed today by the EU Commissioner, Michael McGrath. And the top line and the thing that we all need to watch for is that it's proposed that it could save EU consumers of up to 13.7 billion a year. That would be quite nice, wouldn't it?

Shane Coleman (1:42)

That's a lot of money.

Jess Kelly (1:43)

It's a lot of money. And when you read through the detail, and I'll talk you through what it entails in a second, a lot of it makes pure sense. It's stuff that you and I would have spoken about Shane over the years in various shows and segments and all the rest about big frustrations that we have. The first one that jumped out to me was in relation to subscriptions. So you know when you sign up to something and you can do one tap to join now and just scan your face with your phone and suddenly you're signed up for a free trial or an introductory offer and so on. Under this proposal, the cancelling must be as simple or not overly complex as joining. So rather than you and in some instances up until recently, you used to have to call up providers.

Explain why, bat away discounts and all the rest to say. So under this, it would have to be as simple as signing up and consumers must give consent before it turns into a paid subscription. So if you sign up and this is the big one that I still hear from people about. If you sign up for the free trial of LinkedIn Premium at the end of those 30 days, you would have to actively consent before they could start charging you the 50 quid a month or whatever that may be.

Shane Coleman (2:56)

That would be a big change.

Jess Kelly (2:57)

It would be a big change and would just make us aware of what we're spending our money on and how we get into these sort of ongoing contracts and so on. The dark patterns would have to be done away with.

Shane Coleman (3:09)

This is like there's only two left in stock.

Jess Kelly (3:13)

So that thing of the final few remaining or whatever it may be, that would need to go.

And the big thing for a lot of fans, and they wish this would exist last year or the year before when the Oasis tickets went on sale. For dynamically priced tickets, sellers have to state how many tickets are available at both the lowest and the highest pay grade. So you're in the queue for your Oasis tickets. You're waiting, you're waiting, you're waiting. If you can finally get through and the only tickets are left are 600 euro, that would be a thing of the past. They would flag that there are only 75 remaining at this price point. So you can make an active decision rather than being pushed and peer pressured essentially into buying. Other things that we've heard a little bit about elsewhere would include the addictive features. So the endless scroll, that would be still there, but there would have to be an ability to switch it off. OK, which is something that I would welcome. Advertising, so personalised ads, targeting miners or exploiting consumers vulnerabilities would be banned entirely.