Should Gatekeepers Be Allowed to Combine Data? Ideas for Art. 5(a) of the Draft Digital Markets Act

Should digital gatekeepers be allowed to gather data from users and combine data from different sources? That is one of the key substantive questions of the Digital Markets Act. It is currently addressed in Art. 5(a) of the draft DMA. There are two problems with the current wording: First, it is not specific enough to work as a self-executable provision. Secondly, it could happen that users are nudged into giving consent easily so that the gatekeepers can continue to expand their sets of personal data, without users having a “real” say and with third parties losing out in competition. In this contribution, I analyse this problem. My suggestion is to resort to a “rating solution”: Qualified entities, e.g. trusted data intermediaries, should rate, certify or label the data options offered by the gate-keepers and serve as “data guides” for consumers. I also look at other policy options and more radical solutions to the data problem with the GAFA companies Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.