The concept of the "superplatform" presents a simple way to describe Google’s vast and complex online ad business as a dual-core system that merges market power, infrastructural dominance, and supply chain demarketisation.
News and Research articles on Regulation
Governments around the world pressure internet companies to get informally what they cannot obtain through formal regulatory channels, a pervasive mechanism of governance that challenges fundamental democratic priors.
Thinking of health data governance through an intersectional lens will help to achieve equitable health outcomes.
Codifying “by design” principles into policies may lead to contradictions.
In her op-ed, the author argues that the AI Act overlooks the challenges posed by the use of generative AI in the literary industry. She calls for European legislation that takes into account the specific conditions and cultural value of original literary production.
Despite its growing success and widespread adoption around the world, open banking (OB) struggles to present a coherent identity. Since OB is driven by various justifications, identifying the primary motivations behind regulatory initiatives is crucial for assessing whether the implemented features align with the intended policy objectives.
We must question the assumption that the success of digital economy and policy is best assessed by counting how many digital multinationals a region has managed to give birth to.
A Metaverse from a non-regulated tech environment might cause digital harm to vulnerable communities. The authors argue that addressing policy gaps with social work principles will lead to algorithmic equity in the virtual world.
Recommendation algorithms potentially amplifying extremist content has become a policy concern in recent years. We conduct a novel empirical experiment on three platforms (YouTube, Reddit, and Gab) to test this phenomenon. We find that YouTube’s “Recommended for you” system does promote extreme content. We synthesise the findings into the policy debate and argue that co-regulation may provide some solutions.
This article formulates a list of permitted and forbidden rationales for the rankings of search results within app stores.
This article proposes the concept of platform observability to help systematically study complex algorithmic systems. It sets out three broad principles as guidelines for making platforms more accountable.
Through empirical methods that walkthrough a typical user experience for acquiring virtual private network (VPN) services, this paper attempts to answer the question of how we come to trust, use and govern VPNs.
Content moderation has exploded as a public and a policy concern, but the debate remains too narrow. Nine experts suggest ways to expand it.
Discussing three factors that characterise the activities of political campaigners, this article demonstrates variations in who is using data in campaigns, what the sources of campaign data are, and how data informs communication.
Algorithmic governance as a key concept in controversies around the emerging digital society takes up the idea that digital technologies produce social ordering in a specific way.
What are the informal arrangements governing online content on platforms in Europe, and what are the factors that make them more or less successful?
Zero rating has emerged as one of the most contentious communications policy debates of the last decade. The offer of ‘free’ access to select applications compromises network neutrality, at the same time as it can present advantages to users with limited economic resources. How can we attempt to reconcile these conflicting dimensions of zero rating?
This article distils from the various (proposals for) platform regulation operational principles that can serve as the basis for productive debate on the subject.
In this article the 'Internet of Things' is considered to be a new, powerful governance factor challenging regulation by law described as the ‘Governance by Things’.
Liberal democracies are increasingly considering internet filtering as a means to assert state control over online information exchanges. A variety of filtering techniques have been implemented in Western states to prevent access to certain content deemed harmful. This development poses a series of democratic and ethical questions, particularly when states introduce regulation mandating ISPs to block online content. A first version of this article was previously published at the FOCI'12 conference.