Law and Digital Society

Abstract:
In this article we argue the need for more socio-legal scrutiny in a digitally mediated and data-driven development. We focus and briefly outline socio-legally relevant aspects of the “sharing” economy, that poses a number of conceptual issues on how we understand and regulate innovative platform based ventures. This also arguably underscores a number of issues relating to the role of consumer and user data and the implications of this “datafication”, not least in terms of questions of accountability and balancing of both powers and privacy in a data-driven world that often is described as a “black box” (cf. Pasquale, 2015) in the sense that much of the automated processes – such as the workings of algorithms and third party trade of consumer data – is withheld from insight and transparency.

The article argues that the digitally mediated and data-driven development stresses the need for socio-legal scrutiny. It focuses and briefly outline socio-legally relevant aspects of the “sharing” economy, that poses a number of conceptual issues on how we understand and regulate innovative platform based ventures. The article also underscores a number of issues relating to the role of consumer and user data and the implications of this “datafication”, not least in terms of accountability and balancing of both powers and privacy in an highly automated and algorithmically dependent data-driven world.