Dissolving privacy, one merger at a time: Competition, data and third party tracking

Binns, Reuben; Bietti, Elettra

doi:10.1016/j.clsr.2019.105369

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…5 This allows Facebook to derive comprehensive consumer profiles for offering targeted advertising (and other services) but might also lead to large privacy risks. The decision of the FCO challenged this requirement as abusive, 4 See ACCC (2019,(84)(85)(86)(87), Binns/Bietti (2020), CMA (2020a, paras. 2.18-2.22), Robertson (2020, 162-165).…”

Section: The Controversial Discussion About the German Facebook Casementioning

confidence: 99%

The German Facebook Case: The Law and Economics of the Relationship between Competition and Data Protection Law

Kerber

Zolna

2020

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Can competition law also take into account effects on privacy or should privacy concerns of data-collecting behaviour only be dealt with by data protection law? In this paper we are analysing the German Facebook case, in which certain terms of service (that force consumers to give consent for merging personal data collected through Facebook services with those collected from tracking and third-party websites) were prohibited as exploitative abuse of a dominant firm. We show from an economic perspective that due to the simultaneous existence of two market failures (market dominance, information and behavioral problems) and complex interaction effects between both market failures and both policies in digital markets, the traditional approach of a strict separation of both policies is not possible any more, leading to the need for more collaboration and alignment of both policies. With respect to the substantive question of protecting a minimum level of choice options for consumers regarding personal data vis-a-vis dominant digital platform firms, the recent decision of the German Federal Court of Justice in the Facebook case and the proposed Digital Market Act have opened new perspectives for dealing with privacy concerns in competition law and regulation.

show abstract

Section: The Controversial Discussion About the German Facebook Casementioning

confidence: 99%

The German Facebook Case: The Law and Economics of the Relationship between Competition and Data Protection Law

Kerber

Zolna

2020

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Traditional market share calculations will likely fail to capture the kind of power exercised by firms engaging in the collection of personal data; as the European Data Protection Supervisor noted in 2014, power over personal data "cannot easily be calculated by reference to data on traditional sales or volume" [309]. Alternative market concentration measures and merger and acquisition review processes may be needed which take account of privacy as an aspect of quality [310]; and measure the combinations of data and computational infrastructure that could arise from the consolidated entity and what effects that could have on the structure of the market and potential harms to individuals [311]. In recent years regulators have begun to consider potential privacy harms arising from the consolidation of tracking capabilities and the effects on privacy within in competition and antitrust activity [312].…”

Section: Competition and Antitrustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking on the Web, Mobile and the Internet-of-Things

Binns¹

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tracking' is the collection of data about an individual's activity across multiple distinct contexts and the retention, use, or sharing of data derived from that activity outside the context in which it occurred. This paper aims to introduce tracking on the web, smartphones, and the Internet of Things, to an audience with little or no previous knowledge. It covers these topics primarily from the perspective of computer science and humancomputer interaction, but also includes relevant law and policy aspects. Rather than a systematic literature review, it aims to provide an overarching narrative spanning this large research space.Section 1 introduces the concept of tracking. Section 2 provides a short history of the major developments of tracking on the web. Section 3 presents research covering the detection, measurement and analysis of web tracking technologies. Section 4 delves into the countermeasures against web tracking and mechanisms that have been proposed to allow users to control and limit tracking, as well as studies into end-user perspectives on tracking. Section 5 focuses on tracking on 'smart' devices including smartphones and the internet of things. Section 6 covers emerging issues affecting the future of tracking across these different platforms.42 https://perma.cc/UZ7Y-EHLZ 43 https://perma.cc/XL8L-HZJU

show abstract

“…Larsson et al, 2021; Libert and Binns, 2019). Consequently, several studies argue for the need to include data protection considerations in certain competition law assessments regarding digital markets (Binns and Bietti, 2020; Wasastjerna, 2020), and the European Commission (2021) is also explicitly stating that it will take into account the need to protect user privacy in the above mentioned antitrust investigation of Google’s behaviour on ad tech markets.…”

Section: Reconceptualising the Value Of Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Larsson

2021

European Journal of Communication

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Dissolving privacy, one merger at a time: Competition, data and third party tracking

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

The German Facebook Case: The Law and Economics of the Relationship between Competition and Data Protection Law

The German Facebook Case: The Law and Economics of the Relationship between Competition and Data Protection Law

Tracking on the Web, Mobile and the Internet-of-Things

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

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About