EU tells big companies to make it easier to get rid of pre-installed software or pay up

pcgamer.com:

The EU has had enough of the «Wild West» currently enjoyed by online companies, including those pesky social media types, and so has introduced a number of new rules that they will need to adhere to. Two new acts have been introduced(opens in new tab) to address the social and economic effects of the tech industry, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). 

The general ethos of these new acts is «What is illegal offline, should be illegal online.» It plans to do this by setting clear obligations for digital service providers and large online platforms that act as 'gatekeepers.' That latter one covers a lot of the big social media and search platforms, so it's going to make for some interesting times ahead when they are forced to allow third parties to inter-operate with their own services. Exchanging messages across apps for instance.

The Digital Services Act sets four main obligations:

These all seem pretty straightforward. There are tighter regulations for the bigger services, i.e. those with over 45 million monthly users:

«These platforms will also have to provide users with the choice to not receive recommendations based on profiling. They will also have to facilitate access to their data and algorithms to authorities and vetted researchers.»

The Digital Markets Act is more focused on these so-called 'gatekeepers' and attempts to break up some of the anti-competitive practices that have become common. 

Gatekeepers can no longer:

Ensuring that users can uninstall pre-loaded software and apps is something we absolutely welcome. Far too often you get a phone or other device preloaded with bloatware that you simply cannot get rid of. Well not without jailbreaking it. Will this affect motherboards,