webinar register page

DSA #5 Data Egalitarianism and the Digital Services Act

The DSA aims to address issues of speech and competition. But alongside (or underneath) these primary concerns, the DSA is also a response to growing public frustration over the inegalitarian effects of digital companies in society: economic inequality (as dominant platforms concentrate gains from their outsize market positions into the hands of the few) and social inequality (as the social relations in which people can empower or dominate, uplift or oppress one another, are increasingly materialized in digital form). Debates over the effectiveness of the DSA may gravitate to practical, empirical, and normative ones over its impact on speech and competition, but this talk will focus on its potential egalitarian effects. It will evaluate key provisions of the DSA using egalitarian theories of equal opportunity, democratic equality and distributive equality, to consider what effects the law may have in achieving an egalitarian agenda for reform. The talk will also orient its discussion around the economic incentives that drive much of the activity the DSA seeks to address: ubiquitous data collection from technology companies, to develop behavioral insights into users and exploit such insights for commercial gain.

Feb 25, 2021 03:00 PM in Brussels