Open Access Research Article
DATAFIED CONSUMER MARKETS AND PLATFORM GOVERNANCE: THE DIVERGENT REGULATORY TRAJECTORIES
Abstract
The article argues that
contemporary understandings of the digital consumer are analytically incomplete
unless situated within the architecture and power of digital platforms. Drawing
on recent scholarship and regulatory practice, it first re-conceptualizes the
digital consumer not merely as an individual using networked technologies to
search, transact and participate but as an actor whose choices, vulnerabilities
and agency are structured by platform mediated environments. It then
demonstrates that platforms namely search engines, social media, online
marketplaces, app ecosystems and payment interfaces now function as market
infrastructure organizing visibility, trust, datafication, coordination and
influence. Against this background the article contends that platform
governance rather than classical intermediary liability alone is the
appropriate normative frame for digital consumer protection. Using UK’s Digital
Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC) and the more market driven,
immunity based approach in the United States, the article identifies systemic
flaws in India’s emerging platform governance regime like executive-centric
conditional safe harbor, weak guarantees of user due process and transparency
and fragmented, under specified consumer centric protections. These flaws are
shown to produce an imbalance in which speech-restrictive and enforcement
oriented measure outpace principled safeguards for freedom of expression, fair
treatment and data-driven harms. The article concludes by proposing a
re-orientation from “intermediary liability” to “digital consumer centered
platform governance” grounded in risk based duties of care, transparency and
multi stake holder oversight. In doing so it offers a normative and comparative
framework for assessing whether future reforms in India can move beyond control
centric regulation to a rights compatible model that meaningfully protects
digital consumers in platformised markets.
KEYWORDS: Data, Consumer,
Platform, Intermediary, Intermediary Liability
Published Paper
Author Details
Authors: DR SHEEMA S DHARRegistration ID: 1013586 | Published Paper ID: IJLRA13586Approved ISSN: 2582-6433 | Country: Delhi, India
Article Information
DATAFIED CONSUMER MARKETS AND PLATFORM GOVERNANCE: THE DIVERGENT REGULATORY TRAJECTORIES
Authors: DR SHEEMA S DHAR
- Journal IJLRA
- ISSN 2582-6433
- Volume 3
- Issue 8
About Journal
International Journal for Legal Research and Analysis
- AbbreviationIJLRA
- ISSN2582-6433
- AccessOpen Access
- LicenseCC 4.0
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