The Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP) at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School accepted papers for a Research Roundtable on Competition and Consumer Protection Issues Surrounding Information Flows.   

Firms use consumer information in a variety of ways that implicate both privacy and competition. For example, collection and sharing of consumer data clearly implicate privacy. At the same time, various digital platforms have been accused of using their data advantages to harm competition, and protecting consumer privacy has been used as a justification for alleged anticompetitive conduct. Firms also provide information to the marketplace that can reduce search costs and promote competition, allowing markets to operate more efficiently. The FTC uses its consumer protection power to help assure that these information flows are non-deceptive. While protecting consumers from fraud or privacy violations provides clear benefits, approaches that sweep too broadly threaten to deprive the marketplace of beneficial information. There may be special challenges in maintaining this balance in digital markets, as highlighted in some recent FTC actions. For example, cases against Epic and Amazon have focused on the use of so-called “dark patterns “as unfair and deceptive conduct. Further, the FTC has interpreted the Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR) to cover health apps and privacy violations, and the Restoring Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) to cover deception involving the underlying product, not just the terms of the negative option plan. What’s more, recent settlements involving health apps have banned the use of consumer data for advertising, and the FTC is attempting to modify its consent order against Facebook to ban the use of advertising for users under 18.       

The Program on Economics and Privacy (PEP) accepted authors who developed and presented original scholarly work that focuses broadly on the costs and benefits of these approaches to regulating information flows.