Putting trust into antitrust? Competition policy and data-driven platforms

Abstract

Anti-competitive notions, it seems, are increasingly informing the critical debate on a data-driven economy organised into scalable digital platforms. Issues of market definitions, how to value personal data on multisided platforms, and how to detect and regulate misuses of dominant positions have become key nomenclature on the battlefield of addressing fairness in our contemporary digital societies. This article looks at the central themes for this special issue on governing trust in European platform societies through the lens of contemporary developments in the field of competition law. Three main questions are addressed: (1) To what extent are the platforms’ own abilities to govern their infrastructures, that is, to be de facto regulators over both human behaviour and market circumstances, a challenge for contemporary competition regulation? (2) In what way is the collection, aggregation, or handling of consumers’ data of relevance for competition? (3) How can the particular European challenges of governing US-based digital platforms more broadly be understood in terms of the relationship between transparency and public trust? Of particular relevance – and challenge – here are the platforms’ abilities to govern their infrastructures, albeit through automated moderation, pricing or scalable data handling. It is argued that this aspect of coded, and possibly autonomously adapting, intra-platform governance, poses significant anti-competitive challenges for supervisory authorities, with possible negative implications for consumer autonomy and wellbeing as well as platform-dependent other companies.

The Artificial Recruiter: Risks of Discrimination in Employers’ Use of AI and Automated Decision‐Making

“…Rather, the extensive use of such platforms (including unreflexively) adds to a shift in the balance of power in a society, where societal functions are controlled by a few globally active-largely American-anchoredtechnology conglomerates (Larsson, 2021;van Dijck et al, 2018).…”

Four facets of AI transparency

“…Similarly, research suggests that users find the quantity of information overwhelming, causing information overload, and leading them to disregard the information altogether (Cranor et al, 2015;Larsson et al, 2021).…”

“…This can for example relate to data-driven markets (Pasquale, 2015) or smart city transparency (Brauneis & Goodman, 2018), often in contexts where corporate systems perform public functions. This challenge has received increased attention, not only with regards to end-users, such as citizens, patients or consumers, but also as an issue of distorted competition driven by large-scale digital platforms (cf Larsson, 2021). Such problematic consequences of opacity prompt the need to curb its scope.…”

Evolutionary game analysis of digital platform monopoly and market supervision from the perspective of system dynamics

“…Cao Yang [2] similarly argues that the abuse of relative dominance by digital platforms not only harms the legitimate rights and interests of the enterprises concerned and the healthy development of the industry but also infringes on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers as well as the level playing field of the online market, affecting the improvement of the overall welfare of society and the healthy development of the economy, which must be regulated by law. Larsson [11] discusses how to detect and regulate abuse of dominance on digital platforms based on a competition law perspective, arguing that the governance of platforms poses significant challenges to regulators and may hurt the autonomy and well-being of consumers and other companies that rely on them. Domestic scholar Cao Yang [3] explored the abuse of market dominance by digital platforms at the current stage, arguing that there are shortcomings in China in terms of legislation, enforcement, and regulation, suggesting a governance path of "anti-law-based, supplemented by industry regulation law", focusing on unified and coordinated, multi-dimensional regulation from the details.…”