EU hits Apple, Facebook, TikTok with tougher market restraints

Brussels is working through a dense legislative agenda to build tougher regulation of big tech, arguing it needs to protect European consumers online and to encourage competition in an industry dominated by US giants.

The latest announcement is a milestone in the application of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will force the largest firms to change their ways under a checklist of dos and don'ts and, regulators hope, create a fairer market.

Observers say the law could open a new battlefront between digital titans and the European Union as some companies consider launching legal challenges.

The European Commission, the EU's powerful antitrust body, named 22 "core platform" services belonging to five US tech behemoths identified as "gatekeepers" -- Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft -- and China's ByteDance.