The Push to Regulate Digital Markets and Services

Abstract

In the past few years, efforts to regulate digital platform services have grown in analytical sophistication, acquired political momentum, and started to produce legislative and regulatory interventions. The emerging policy frameworks—which tend to focus on content, data, and market power concerns—show degrees of variation, by region and by policy domain, and reflect various normative and policy goals. This essay examines their underlying policy goals, normative commitments, and the tensions and trade-offs they present.