EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

Prague, Czechia

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Firstly (Section 3), the paper provides a brief overview of the current state of decentralised social media platforms, or the models currently used by several platforms, proposed, or foreseen by currently ongoing projects. With this overview, the paper attempts to distinguish some basic types of decentralised platforms. Furthermore, it suggests values that could be identified as platform decentralisation goals to contrast them with the goals of EU competition law. Subsequently (Section 4 and corresponding subsections), the paper turns to the main problem. To answer this main research question, the paper explores several sub-questions and is accordingly divided into corresponding parts: a) Do the generally recognised goals of EU competition law correspond with the (so far) recognised goals of decentralising social media platforms? b) Can the structure of existing, proposed, or currently developed decentralised social media environments be “translated” into sufficiently delineated relevant markets as EU competition law understands them? c) Can EU competition law be used to decentralise social media platforms? d) Can EU competition law be used tomaintain a decentralised environment achieved without the intervention of EU competition law? After reviewing all of the abovementioned questions, the paper provides an overview of conclusions. 3. Decentralised Social Media Platforms To contrast the existing, developed, or proposed models of decentralised social media environments, it is necessary to briefly outline the contrasting centralised model (employed e.g. by YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter). In such a model, an online platform both provides the necessary “infrastructure” (i.e. user profiles, user interfaces, and the necessary mechanisms to share and spread online content) but is also in control of monitoring, evaluating, preferencing, flagging, and removing user content, either directly or with an additional layer in the form of a dispute resolution body. On the other hand, there is a variety of architectures used either by existing decentralised platforms or services that partially decentralised some aspects of their operation. 3.1 Decentralisation currently in use Mastodon is a microblogging network, existing in thousands of “instances”, i.e. different servers run directly by users on their own server infrastructure. While servers are independent, they all use open-source code anyone can contribute to (Mastodon, 2021a). Mastodon instances are usually crowdfunded and users from one instance can connect to another community (if permitted). Each instance is moderated according to its own rules, by community moderators, and with

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