Competition policy in the West is shifting from a deliberative, evidence-based, ex-post approach to a form that is more presumptive, pre-emptive, and ex-ante . The European Union’s (EU) Digital Markets Act (DMA), for example, aims to make the “digital sector open and contestable”. [1] It places a set of negative and positive obligations on entities designated as “gatekeepers”, defined in the DMA as companies that have significant market influence as well a defined threshold of turnover or users. The restrictions on such entities include bars on targeted advertising and the use of personal data gathered from one platform to offer services on another. [2] A gatekeeper therefore would be barred from using data mined from its browsing service for targeted ads on social media or other ad-supported products. [3] These prohibitions work on the assumption that large digital businesses enjoy entrenched positions because they create “conglomerate ecosystems around their core platform services, which reinforces existing entry barriers” and can result in “unfair” conduct. [4]
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