The consumer protection movement has a long history of advocating for changes in products and services - and the terms and conditions that govern their use - in the public interest. Increasingly, their mission has had to engage with digital goods and transactions, and the new types of fraud, scams, and harms that they enable. Equally, digital rights advocates have played a key role in centring end-user rights and freedoms while challenging power and information asymmetries in the tech sector.

As society becomes increasingly datafied and platformised, regulators the world over are keen to address unequal bargaining power, and to promote fairer, healthier digital spaces. Australia’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code (NMBC) was one of the first attempts to query the fundamental business model of news media, and it inspired other governments to tackle gatekeepers and structural imbalances. Within the Asia-Pacific region, South Korea and China have launched antitrust investigations across industries. The European Union put forward the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), proposing ex ante regulatory tools that go beyond traditional (ex post) competition/antitrust law. This panel brings together experts from Australia, the European Commission, Korea and China to discuss diverse regulatory approaches, and their implications for innovation and consumer welfare, and the future of digital platforms.