How to deal with digital gatekeepers?

Google and Meta know us better than we do ourselves, Amazon is an indispensable trading partner for countless retailers, and Twitter has the power to block a US President’s free speech. Over the past two decades, Big Tech companies have grown from tiny start-ups to become the gatekeepers of the internet. Legislatures, regulators and competition authorities worldwide, including especially in the European Union, are struggling to find the best way to deal with these digital gatekeepers.

What can historical examples of gatekeeper power teach us about the regulation of Big Tech today? What can we learn from the way in which legislatures, regulators and competition authorities tried to regulate gatekeeper power in the past? What values and goals guided regulation of gatekeeper power in the past, and to what extent were regulations successful? These are the questions Justin Lindeboom addresses in his legal-historical and legal-theoretical research into the means, goals and values of gatekeeper regulation.

Links
Faculty of Law: https://www.rug.nl/law