Yesterday, Amazon sued the EU to retract its designation as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA was formulated to curb disinformation online by requiring large designated platforms to take extra measures to tackle illegal online content. Amazon’s justification for rejecting the additional compliance burden is based on the fact that the vast majority of its income comes from retail rather than advertising: in its view, “the DSA was designed to address systematic risks posed by very large companies with advertising as their primary revenue and that distribute speech and information”.
Aside from the fact that Amazon also operates a substantial advertising business, this notion of being singled-out is entirely false. Whilst it is true that of the 19 companies that have thus far been designated under the DSA, most are ad-funded social media platforms, Zalando, the German fashion retailer, also made the cut.
More significantly, the view that Amazon’s retail focus somehow inoculates it against any disinformation risk, signifies a narrow reading of the DSA and or a very short memory. Amazon was, of course, investigated by the European Commission for distorting its marketplace by picking winners in the Amazon Buy Box. Such activity, i.e., unduly influencing customers’ buying behaviours through its presentation of certain products, would surely qualify as damaging disinformation which the DSA aims to curb.
More broadly, Amazon’s suit might indicate a broader willingness on the part of Big Tech to resist and litigate similar legislation wherever possible. We at MOW have for instance raised concerns that the effectiveness of the Digital Competition Bill could be severely undermined by the designation process. Currently the bill requires that in evaluating an undertaking’s entrenched market power, “the CMA must carry out a forward-looking assessment of a period of at least five years”. This makes designation necessarily speculative and open to challenge by judicial review.
Amazon’s testy response to the EU’s legislation should prompt UK legislators to tighten up our own measures if we still hope to successfully rein in the tech giants.