Platform Regulation: Exemplars, Approaches, and Solutions

Powerful monopolist platforms have embraced our lives worldwide, monetizing personal data and manipulating it for advertisers. This power is being challenged by data breaches, platform manipulations, and monopolist behaviors, leading to regulatory responses from governments. The proposed volume provides an introduction to platform regulation, the conundrums and paradoxes involved, and regulatory pathways being explored by national and regional governments.

Format: Hardback
Length: 142 pages
Publication date: 06 March 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Over the past decade or two, a handful of powerful, monopolist platforms have taken over our lives worldwide. They mediate our social interactions, relationships, online searches, and purchases. We live in a global economy fueled by the monetization of emotions. It is now widely acknowledged that various platforms exploit the advantages of algorithmic power and platform externalities to mine and privatize personal data, which is then sold to advertisers targeting not only present but also future economic behaviors of users. Furthermore, there have been reports of the complicity of some of these platforms in data breaches that have influenced the fortunes of political parties across different geographies. This unprecedented power of platforms is, however, being challenged today. Data breaches, evidence of platform manipulations, platform complicities with state surveillance, and their monopolistic behaviors and their consequences for competition and data privacy have prompted regulatory responses from governments around the world. National and regional courts of law have gathered substantial evidence of various forms of platform illegalities that discriminate against competitors and point to the privatization of personal data on a global scale. The proposed volume offers an introduction to the issues and challenges related to platform regulation, the conundrums and paradoxes involved, and also to some of the well-conceived and manageable regulatory pathways currently being explored by national and regional governments. It highlights regulatory responses from four jurisdictions: the European Union, the United States, India, and Australia.

Over the past decade or two, a handful of powerful, monopolist platforms have taken over our lives worldwide. They mediate our social interactions, relationships, online searches, and purchases. We live in a global economy fueled by the monetization of emotions. It is now widely acknowledged that various platforms exploit the advantages of algorithmic power and platform externalities to mine and privatize personal data, which is then sold to advertisers targeting not only present but also future economic behaviors of users. Furthermore, there have been reports of the complicity of some of these platforms in data breaches that have influenced the fortunes of political parties across different geographies. This unprecedented power of platforms is, however, being challenged today. Data breaches, evidence of platform manipulations, platform complicities with state surveillance, and their monopolistic behaviors and their consequences for competition and data privacy have prompted regulatory responses from governments around the world. National and regional courts of law have gathered substantial evidence of various forms of platform illegalities that discriminate against competitors and point to the privatization of personal data on a global scale. The proposed volume offers an introduction to the issues and challenges related to platform regulation, the conundrums
and paradoxes involved, and also to some of the well-conceived and manageable regulatory pathways currently being explored by national and regional governments. It highlights regulatory responses from four jurisdictions: the European Union, the United States, India, and Australia.

Weight: 316g
Dimension: 223 x 145 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192887962