Platform Governance

Platforms are not simply firms that happen to operate online. They write the rules under which other people trade, speak and are seen, and they enforce those rules at a scale no court could match. Digital platforms are not only used in the private sector; they are also gaining increasing influence in public administration. European law has responded with the Digital Services Act that regulates  how platforms moderate content and account for what they do, the Digital Markets Act on what the largest of them may and may not do towards business users, and several other specific regulations. Switzerland is drafting its own platform regulation in the KomPG.

We consider the design, implementation and impact of these policies. How does the DSA’s procedural approach change online practices and business models? What work is left for competition law once conduct rules are set in advance? What happens to the Brussels effect when a smaller jurisdiction adopts the substance of EU rules without the enforcement capacity behind them?

DSA and DMA enforcement and the first rounds of practice around them; the Swiss KomPG as it moves through consultation; the interface between platform regulation, competition law and consumer protection; and the question of what a jurisdiction the size of Switzerland can realistically enforce.

• Convergence of platforms and generative AI (Miriam Buiten)

• Implementation of the DSA: Stakeholder engagement (Miriam Buiten)

• Transatlantic approaches to platform governance (Miriam Buiten)

• Digital platforms in public administration (Désirée Klinger)

• Growing up Online (Isabelle Wildhaber with Catalina Goanta)

• Born to Buy (Isabelle Wildhaber)

• Bourreau, Krämer & Buiten, Interoperability in Digital Markets (CERRE Report, 2022)

• Buiten, The Digital Services Act: From Intermediary Liability to Platform Regulation, Journal of Intellectual Property, Information Technology and E-Commerce Law (JIPITEC), Vol. 12(5): 361-380 (2021)

• Buiten, Der Digital Services Act (DSA): Vertrautes Haftungsregime, neue Verpflichtungen, Zeitschrift für Europarecht (ZEuR): 102-119 (2021)

• Buiten, Exploitative Abuses in Digital Markets: Between Competition Law and Data Protection Law, Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, Vol. 9(2): 270-288 (2021)

• Buiten, de Streel & Peitz, Rethinking Liability Rules for Online Hosting Platforms, International Journal of Law and Information Technology, Vol. 28(2): 139-166 (2020)

• Buiten, Regulating Data Giants: Between Competition Law and Data Protection Law, in: Mathis (ed.), New Developments in Competition Law and Economics (Springer, 2018), 265-294

• Annabell, Fieseler, Goanta & Wildhaber (eds), The Hashtag Hustle: Law and Policy Perspectives on Working in the Influencer Economy (Edward Elgar, Law, Technology and Society series)

• Goanta & Wildhaber, In the business of influence: contractual practices and social media content monetisation, SZW 91 (2019)

• Goanta & Wildhaber, Controlling influencer content through contracts: a qualitative empirical study of the Swiss influencer market, in: The Regulation of Social Media (Edward Elgar, 2020)

• Klingler, Amazon.Gov: Disintermediation in Public Procurement Through Digital Platforms – Benefits and Risks, IUS PUBLICUM, Vol. 2024(1): 1-41 (2024). 

• Klingler, Bokemeyer, Della Rocca & Bezerra Nunes, Amazon’s Digital Theory of Harm (cited by the EU Impact Assessment of the Digital Markets Act) (2020).