VUB-professor in Law Joris van Hoboken was selected as one of the winning papers for the 12th Annual Privacy Papers for Policymakers from the Future of Privacy forum for his article titled “Smartphone Platforms as Privacy Regulators.” The award recognizes leading privacy scholarship that is relevant to policymakers in the U.S. Congress, at U.S. federal agencies, and international data protection authorities.
In his paper, van Hoboken analyses the role of online platforms and their impact on data privacy in today’s digital economy. The paper first distinguishes the different roles that platforms can have in protecting privacy in online ecosystems, including governing access to data, design of relevant interfaces, and policing the behavior of the platform’s users. He then provides an argument as to what platforms’ role should be in legal frameworks, advocating for a compromise between direct regulation of platforms and mere self-regulation, arguing that platforms should be required to make official disclosures about their privacy-related policies and practices for their respective ecosystems.
The full paper is available on sciencedirect.com.