Online platforms had until February 17 to reveal their monthly audiences. Beyond 45 million users, they are considered Vlop/Vlose and are exposed to greater obligations towards the European Union, but also to much higher fines. Enough to draw up a ranking of the most used services that reveals some surprises.
Under the European Union Digital Services Act, the Commission’s timetable called for digital services with users in Europe” make public their monthly hearings within the Union“No later than February 17, can we read in le figaro. Services that exceed 45 million unique visitors (representing 10% of EU citizens) will have four months from that date to comply with all the requirements of this ambitious regulation of illegal content in the digital space».
The Digital Services Act (DSA), what is it?
Last October, the Council of the European Union approved the regulation of the Digital Services Law together with the Digital Markets Law (DMA), after the vote of the European Parliament last July. A text that will be applicable in February 2024, “ except for very large online platforms and very large search engines which will be affected from 2023 “, we can read on the siteFri-publique.fr . The main goal of this legislation is to remove illegal content by holding platforms accountable. The text is mainly aimed at the larger platforms that give more visibility to the content.
Obviously we think of social networks, but also search engines, online stores andcloud. This targets images, videos, messages that are racist, anti-Semitic, child pornography, misinformation, etc. Specifically, the services in question will have to react more quickly to the removal of this content, certain types of targeted advertising or even manipulated interfaces (one thinks in particular of the old Amazon Prime termination process).
Those who exceed 45 million users per month will also have greater obligations, but also greater penalties. In fact, the legislation establishes that the European Commission can impose fines of up to 6% of global turnover. For the more “big fishlike the Gamam (Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft), this could represent billions of euros. To go further, the institution reserves the right to prohibit the activities of the companies in question within the European Union.
The ranking of the most used platforms in the European Union
These rankings include the number of unique users each month by platform. These figures were republished by the journalist from political Clotilde Goujard in a threadOn twitterbut also from Martin Husovec’s spreadsheet, Professor-Researcher of Law at the London School of Economics. Below 45 million active users per month, platforms are not considered” vlop», from V.very large online platformsliterally very large online platforms.
We also count thesee“, the Vvery large online search engines, namely very broad search engines. The journalist fromfigaroChloé Woitier completes the ranking with French e-commerce platforms in particular, but also bless tobaccoDirector of Institutional Relations and Public Policy (which may include lobbying) at Google.
- YouTube: 401.7 million users;
- Google (search engine): 332 million users;
- Google Maps: 278.6 million users;
- Google Play: 274.6 million users;
- Facebook: 255 million users;
- Instagram: 250 million users;
- Wikipedia: 151.5 million users;
- TikTok: 125 million users;
- LinkedIn: 122 million users; (not registered, but 42 million users; registered)
- Bing: 107 million users;
- Twitter: 100.9 million users;
- Snapchat: 96.8 million users;
- Google Shopping: 74.9 million users;
- Waze: 40.2 million users;
- Vinted: 37.4 million users;
- Telegram: 38.5 million users;
- Otto: 37.6 million users;
- Quora: 36.4 million users;
- Skyscanner: 34 million users;
- Pornhub: 33 million users;
- Google Chrome WebStore: 32.3 million users;
- Zalando: 30.8 million users;
- Airbnb: 30.6 million users;
- Google Hotels: 30.6 million users;
- Leboncoin: 26.6 million users;
- Roblox: 25.2 million users;
- Fnac: 24 million users;
- Epic Games Store: 21.3 million users;
- BeReal: 18 million users;
- Fortnite: 16.3 million players
- Wallapop: 12.9 million users;
- DuckDuckGo: 11 million users;
- GitHub: between 10 and 11 million users;
- Cdiscount: 10.9 million users;
- Reddit: 10.2 million users;
- Wolt: 10 million users;
- Adobe Lightroom: 9.7 million users;
- Darty: 8.9 million users;
- YouPorn: 7.3 million users;
- Glassdoor: 6 million users;
- Google Things: 3.6 million users;
- Adobe Behance: 1.5 million users;
- Autovit.ro: 1.5 million users;
- Wix: 1.3 million users;
- Adobe Stock: 1,067,771 users;
- Lego Ideas: 800,000 users;
- Adobe Creative Cloud Express: 393,352 users;
- chess24.com: less than 250,000 users;
- Adobe Photoshop Express: 150,864 users.
These data are usually calculated over the last six months of 2022, that is, they end on December 31, 2022. In total, thirteen services are considered Vlops. There you will find the services of Alphabet, Meta, ByteDance, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, Pinterest, Snapchat and Wikipedia.
the other vlops
These services admit to having more than 45 million users per month, but did not disclose the exact figure:
Some declare just above without precision, while others declare well above this figure. As indicatedle figaro, this is against the directives of Brussels. We do not know at this time what consequences these decisions could have in the future.
Those who are not part of the Vlop
Some sites have stated that they are not part of the Vlops, without detailing the exact numbers and some say that they are well below 45 million users each month:
The surprises that this ranking reveals: Bing not so far behind Google and Facebook just ahead of Instagram
We often tend to pit Bing against Google: in the collective imagination, the latter is by far the most used search engine. But actually, Google only uses “that» by three times more users; roughly that Bing. However, there are still some explanations for this: Edge is the default web browser on Windows computers, and it integrates Bing as the default search engine. This means that when you set up a new machine, you almost necessarily go through the Microsoft search engine. Same thing in Start menu search: it’s Bing.
Another surprise: Facebook remains ahead of Instagram, at least on the soil of the member countries of the European Union. It surpasses it by 5 million users, which is not much of 250 million. While you might think that this large number of Facebook users is due to the use of Messenger, this is not what the Meta statement specifies, which defines “a monthly active user as a registered and logged in Facebook user who has visited Facebook via our website or mobile device in the last 30 days“. A priori therefore, this does not concern the instant messaging application of Mark Zuckerberg’s group.
Speaking of Instagram, we realize that it is twice as popular as TikTok, while the latter app is becoming more and more popular, especially among young netizens. In addition, the ByteDance application is in the crosshairs of the European Commission: according to it, TikTok is far from being all white in terms of violent content. Last astonishment, that of streaming music services: Deezer and Spotify have less than 45 million users; on European soil, without knowing the exact number. If YouTube also brings YouTube Music together, it’s pretty amazing to really see the fragmentation of the different services.
However, what remains more impressive is YouTube: 401.7 million users; per month, this represents approximately 89% of the inhabitants of the European Union. Otherwise ten, 9 out of 10 inhabitants use YouTube at least once a month. Enough to achieve the democratization of the service throughout the continent, so much so that it is even ahead of Google. This is mainly due to the fact that YouTube has no real competitor. The most important it has known is Dailymotion, but the latter is far from being today.
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