Competition Law and Consumers in Digital Platforms

In the digital market, giant platform (PF) providers, represented by global players such as GAFA, are expanding their market position through the use of big data obtained from consumers. Since digital platform (DPF) firms are characterized by their tendency to monopolize by oligopolize the market, there has been an increasing number of competition law violations by DPF operators, the development of various legal systems, and academic discussions with the aim of protecting consumer rights and ensuring transparency and fairness in the trading environment. DPF operators should be subject to the duty of “information fiduciary” (duty of care, duty of loyalty, and duty of confidentiality) as a general guiding principle (preferably by legislative allowance). The Digital Platform Transparency Act is not an end point of consumer protection in dealings with DPF, but only a milestone. The legal formality of being an “intermediary” alone should not prevent DPF operators from being found liable. In principle, the question of who is responsible must not affect the efficiency of society (social welfare) as a whole. It is thus not appropriate to unilaterally place the risk of seller’s incapacity on consumers, considering the enforcement costs of consumers and the risk of the primarily responsible party’s inability to meet the obligations. From an economic point of view, it is not appropriate to make consumers bear such risks unilaterally. The contribution of this chapter to the development of competition law is that it organizes the discipline of competition law on DPF as a necessity from the aspect of ensuring trust and discusses the applicability of labeling regulations. In this way, the scope of consumer protection for DPFs is supplemented by competition law, and the possibility of realizing more appropriate competition in the market is shown, which has not been seen in previous discussions of competition law and is considered to be original. A limitation of this chapter is that it is based on the system of Japanese law. However, the subject of this chapter is the applicability of competition law and labeling regulations to the conduct of DPF, and it is applicable to the discussion of not only Japanese competition law but also competition laws around the world.