The practice of so-called “self-preferencing” has come to embody the zeitgeist of competition policy for digital markets, as legislative initiatives are undertaken in jurisdictions around the world that to seek, in various ways, to constrain large digital platforms from granting favorable treatment to their own goods and services. The core concern cited by policymakers is that gatekeepers may abuse their dual role—as both an intermediary and a trader operating on the platform—to pursue a strategy of biased intermediation that entrenches their power in core markets (defensive leveraging) and extends it to associated markets (offensive leveraging).
In addition to active interventions by lawmakers, self-preferencing has also emerged as a new theory of harm before European courts and antitrust authorities. Should antitrust enforcers be allowed to pursue such a theory, they would gain significant leeway to bypass the legal standards and evidentiary burdens traditionally required to prove that a given business practice is anticompetitive. This should be of particular concern, given the broad range of practices and types of exclusionary behavior that could be characterized as self-preferencing—only some of which may, in some specific contexts, include exploitative or anticompetitive elements.
In a new working paper for the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), I provide an overview of the relevant traditional antitrust theories of harm, as well as the emerging case law, to analyze whether and to what extent self-preferencing should be considered a new standalone offense under EU competition law. The experience to date in European case law suggests that courts have been able to address platforms’ self-preferencing practices under existing theories of harm, and that it may not be sufficiently novel to constitute a standalone theory of harm.
European Case Law on Self-Preferencing
Practices by digital platforms that might be deemed self-preferencing first garnered significant attention from European competition enforcers with the European Commission’s Google Shoppinginvestigation, which examined whether the search engine’s results pages positioned and displayed its own comparison-shopping service more favorably than the websites of rival comparison-shopping services. According to the Commission’s findings, Google’s conduct fell outside the scope of competition on the merits and could have the effect of extending Google’s dominant position in the national markets for general Internet search into adjacent national markets for comparison-shopping services, in addition to protecting Google’s dominance in its core search market.
Rather than explicitly posit that self-preferencing (a term the Commission did not use) constituted a new theory of harm, the Google Shopping ruling described the conduct as belonging to the well-known category of “leveraging.” The Commission therefore did not need to propagate a new legal test, as it held that the conduct fell under a well-established form of abuse. The case did, however, spur debate over whether the legal tests the Commission did apply effectively imposed on Google a principle of equal treatment of rival comparison-shopping services.
But it should be noted that conduct similar to that alleged in the Google Shopping investigation actually came before the High Court of England and Wales several months earlier, this time in a dispute between Google and Streetmap. At issue in that case was favorable search results Google granted to its own maps, rather than to competing online maps. The UK Court held, however, that the complaint should have been appropriately characterized as an allegation of discrimination; it further found that Google’s conduct did not constitute anticompetitive foreclosure. A similar result was reached in May 2020 by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal in the Funda case.
Conversely, in June 2021, the French Competition Authority (AdlC) followed the European Commission into investigating Google’s practices in the digital-advertising sector. Like the Commission, the AdlC did not explicitly refer to self-preferencing, instead describing the conduct as “favoring.”
Given this background and the proliferation of approaches taken by courts and enforcers to address similar conduct, there was significant anticipation for the judgment that the European General Court would ultimately render in the appeal of the Google Shopping ruling. While the General Court upheld the Commission’s decision, it framed self-preferencing as a discriminatory abuse. Further, the Court outlined four criteria that differentiated Google’s self-preferencing from competition on the merits.
Specifically, the Court highlighted the “universal vocation” of Google’s search engine—that it is open to all users and designed to index results containing any possible content; the “superdominant” position that Google holds in the market for general Internet search; the high barriers to entry in the market for general search services; and what the Court deemed Google’s “abnormal” conduct—behaving in a way that defied expectations, given a search engine’s business model, and that changed after the company launched its comparison-shopping service.
While the precise contours of what the Court might consider discriminatory abuse aren’t yet clear, the decision’s listed criteria appear to be narrow in scope. This stands at odds with the much broader application of self-preferencing as a standalone abuse, both by the European Commission itself and by some national competition authorities (NCAs).
Indeed, just a few weeks after the General Court’s ruling, the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) handed down a mammoth fine against Amazon over preferential treatment granted to third-party sellers who use the company’s own logistics and delivery services. Rather than reflecting the qualified set of criteria laid out by the General Court, the Italian decision was clearly inspired by the Commission’s approach in Google Shopping. Where the Commission described self-preferencing as a new form of leveraging abuse, AGCM characterized Amazon’s practices as tying.
Self-preferencing has also been raised as a potential abuse in the context of data and information practices. In November 2020, the European Commission sent Amazon a statement of objections detailing its preliminary view that the company had infringed antitrust rules by making systematic use of non-public business data, gathered from independent retailers who sell on Amazon’s marketplace, to advantage the company’s own retail business. (Amazon responded with a set of commitments currently under review by the Commission.)
Both the Commission and the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority have lodged similar allegations against Facebook over data gathered from advertisers and then used to compete with those advertisers in markets in which Facebook is active, such as classified ads. The Commission’s antitrust proceeding against Apple over its App Store rules likewise highlights concerns that the company may use its platform position to obtain valuable data about the activities and offers of its competitors, while competing developers may be denied access to important customer data.
These enforcement actions brought by NCAs and the Commission appear at odds with the more bounded criteria set out by the General Court in Google Shopping, and raise tremendous uncertainty regarding the scope and definition of the alleged new theory of harm.
Self-Preferencing, Platform Neutrality, and the Limits of Antitrust Law
The growing tendency to invoke self-preferencing as a standalone theory of antitrust harm could serve two significant goals for European competition enforcers. As mentioned earlier, it offers a convenient shortcut that could allow enforcers to skip the legal standards and evidentiary burdens traditionally required to prove anticompetitive behavior. Moreover, it can function, in practice, as a means to impose a neutrality regime on digital gatekeepers, with the aims of both ensuring a level playing field among competitors and neutralizing the potential conflicts of interests implicated by dual-mode intermediation.
The dual roles performed by some platforms continue to fuel the never-ending debate over vertical integration, as well as related concerns that, by giving preferential treatment to its own products and services, an integrated provider may leverage its dominance in one market to related markets. From this perspective, self-preferencing is an inevitable byproduct of the emergence of ecosystems.
However, as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has recognized, self-preferencing conduct is “often benign.” Furthermore, the total value generated by an ecosystem depends on the activities of independent complementors. Those activities are not completely under the platform’s control, although the platform is required to establish and maintain the governance structures regulating access to and interactions around that ecosystem.
Given this reality, a complete ban on self-preferencing may call the very existence of ecosystems into question, challenging their design and monetization strategies. Preferential treatment can take many different forms with many different potential effects, all stemming from platforms’ many different business models. This counsels for a differentiated, case-by-case, and effects-based approach to assessing the alleged competitive harms of self-preferencing.
Antitrust law does not impose on platforms a general duty to ensure neutrality by sharing their competitive advantages with rivals. Moreover, possessing a competitive advantage does not automatically equal an anticompetitive effect. As the European Court of Justice recently stated in Servizio Elettrico Nazionale, competition law is not intended to protect the competitive structure of the market, but rather to protect consumer welfare. Accordingly, not every exclusionary effect is detrimental to competition. Distinctions must be drawn between foreclosure and anticompetitive foreclosure, as only the latter may be penalized under antitrust.
Early last month, the Italian competition authority issued a record 1.128 billion euro fine against Amazon for abuse of dominance under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). In its order, the Agenzia Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) essentially argues that Amazon has combined its Amazon.it marketplace and Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) services to exclude logistics rivals such as FedEx, DHL, UPS, and Poste Italiane.
The sanctions came exactly one month after the European General Court seconded the European Commission’s “discovery” in the Google Shopping case of a new antitrust infringement known as “self-preferencing,” which also cited Article 102 TFEU. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, legislation was introduced in the United States earlier this year to prohibit the practice. Meanwhile, the EU’s legislative bodies have been busy taking steps to approve the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which would regulate so-called digital “gatekeepers.”
Italy thus joins a wave of policymakers that have either imposed heavy-handed decisions to “rein in” online platforms, or are seeking to implement ex ante regulations toward that end. Ultimately, the decision is reminiscent of the self-preferencing prohibition contained in Article 6a of the current draft of the DMA and reflects much of what is wrong with the current approach to regulating tech. It presages some of the potential problems with punishing efficient behavior for the sake of protecting competitors through “common carrier antitrust.” However, if this decision is anything to go by, these efforts will end up hurting the very consumers authorities purport to protect and lending color to more general fears over the DMA.
In this post, we discuss how the AGCM’s reasoning departs from sound legal and economic thinking to reach a conclusion at odds with the traditional goal of competition law—i.e., the protection of consumer welfare. Neo-Brandeisians and other competition scholars who dispute the centrality of the consumer welfare standard and would use antitrust to curb “bigness” may find this result acceptable, in principle. But even they must admit that the AGCM decision ultimately serves to benefit large (if less successful) competitors, and not the “small dealers and worthy men” of progressive lore.
Relevant Market Definition
Market definition constitutes a preliminary step in any finding of abuse under Article 102 TFEU. An excessively narrow market definition can result in false positives by treating neutral or efficient conduct as anticompetitive, while an overly broad market definition might allow anticompetitive conduct to slip through the cracks, leading to false negatives.
Amazon Italy may be an example of the former. Here, the AGCM identified two relevant markets: the leveraging market, which it identified as the Italian market for online marketplace intermediation, and the leveraged market, which it identified as the market for e-commerce logistics. The AGCM charges that Amazon is dominant in the former and that it gained an illegal advantage in the latter. It found, in this sense, that online marketplaces constitute a uniquely relevant market that is not substitutable for other offline or online sales channels, such as brick-and-mortar shops, price-comparison websites (e.g., Google Shopping), or dedicated sales websites (e.g., Nike.com/it). Similarly, it concluded that e-commerce logistics are sufficiently different from other forms of logistics as to comprise a separate market.
The AGCM’s findings combine qualitative and quantitative evidence, including retailer surveys and “small but significant and non-transitory increase in price” (SSNIP) tests. They also include a large dose of speculative reasoning.
For instance, the AGCM asserts that online marketplaces are fundamentally different from price-comparison sites because, in the latter case, purchase transactions do not take place on the platform. It asserts that e-commerce logistics are different from traditional logistics because the former require a higher degree of automation for transportation and storage. And in what can only be seen as a normative claim, rather than an objective assessment of substitutability, the Italian watchdog found that marketplaces are simply better than dedicated websites because, e.g., they offer greater visibility and allow retailers to save on marketing costs. While it is unclear what weights the AGCM assigned to each of these considerations when defining the relevant markets, it is reasonable to assume they played some part in defining the nature and scope of Amazon’s market presence in Italy.
In all of these instances, however, while the AGCM carefully delineated superficial distinctions between these markets, it did not actually establish that those differences are relevant to competition. Fetishizing granular but ultimately irrelevant differences between products and services—such as between marketplaces and shopping comparison sites—is a sure way to incur false positives, a misstep tantamount to punishing innocuous or efficient business conduct.
Dominance
The AGCM found that Amazon was “hyper-dominant” in the online marketplace intermediation market. Dominance was established by looking at revenue from marketplace sales, where Amazon’s share had risen from about 65% in 2016 to 75% in 2019. Taken in isolation, this figure might suggest that Amazon’s competitors cannot thrive in the market. A broader look at the data, however, paints a picture of more generalized growth, with some segments greatly benefiting newcomers and small, innovative marketplaces.
For instance, virtually all companies active in the online marketplace intermediation market have experienced significant growth in terms of monthly visitors. It is true that Amazon’s visitors grew significantly, up 150%, but established competitors like Aliexpress and eBay also saw growth rates of 90% and 25%, respectively. Meanwhile, Wish grew a massive 10,000% from 2016 to 2019; while ManoMano and Zalando grew 450% and 100%, respectively.
In terms of active users (i.e., visits that result in a purchase), relative numbers seem to have stayed roughly the same, although the AGCM claims that eBay saw a 20-30% drop. The number of third-party products Amazon offered through Marketplace grew from between 100 and 500 million to between 500 million and 1 billion, while other marketplaces appear to have remained fairly constant, with some expanding and others contracting.
In sum, while Amazon has undeniably improved its position in practically all of the parameters considered by the AGCM, indicators show that the market as a whole has experienced and is experiencing growth. The improvement in Amazon’s position relative to some competitors—notably eBay, which AGCM asserts is Amazon’s biggest competitor—should therefore not obscure the fact that there is entry and expansion both at the fringes (ManoMano, Wish), and in the center of the market for online marketplace intermediation (Aliexpress).
Amazon’s Allegedly Abusive Conduct
According to the AGCM, Amazon has taken advantage of vertical integration to engage in self-preferencing. Specifically, the charge is that the company offers exclusive and purportedly crucial advantages on the Amazon.it marketplace to sellers who use Amazon’s own e-commerce logistics service, FBA. The purported advantages of this arrangement include, to name a few, the coveted Prime badge, the elimination of negative user feedback on sale or delivery, preferential algorithmic treatment, and exclusive participation in Amazon’s sales promotions (e.g., Black Friday, Cyber Monday). As a result, according to the AGCM, products sold through FBA enjoy more visibility and a better chance to win the “Buy Box.”
The AGCM claims this puts competing logistics operators like FedEx, Poste Italiane, and DHL at a disadvantage, because non-FBA products have less chance to be sold than FBA products, regardless of any efficiency or quality criteria. In the AGCM’s words, “Amazon has stolen demand for other e-commerce logistics operators.”
Indirectly, Amazon’s “self-preferencing” purportedly also harms competing marketplaces like eBay by creating incentives for sellers to single-home—i.e., to sell only through Amazon Marketplace. The argument here is that retailers will not multi-home to avoid duplicative costs associated with FBA, e.g., storing goods in several warehouses.
Although it is not necessary to demonstrate anticompetitive effects under Article 102 TFEU, the AGCM claims that Amazon’s behavior has caused drastic worsening in other marketplaces’ competitive position by constraining their ability to reach the minimum scale needed to enjoy direct and indirect network effects. The Italian authorities summarily assert that this results in consumer harm, although the gargantuan 250-page decision spends scarcely one paragraph on this point.
Intuitively, however, Amazon’s behavior should, in principle, benefit consumers by offering something that most find tremendously valuable: a guarantee of quick delivery for a wide range of goods. Indeed, this is precisely why it is so misguided to condemn self-preferencing by online platforms.
As some have already argued, we cannot assume that something is bad for competition just because it is bad for certain competitors. For instance, a lot of unambiguously procompetitive behavior, like cutting prices, puts competitors at a disadvantage. The same might be true for a digital platform that preferences its own service because it is generally better than the alternatives provided by third-party sellers. In the case at hand, for example, Amazon’s granting marketplace privileges to FBA products may help users to select the products that Amazon can guarantee will best satisfy their needs. This is perfectly plausible, as customers have repeatedly shown that they often prefer less open, less neutral options.
The key question, therefore, should be whether the behavior in question excludes equally efficient rivals in such a way as to harm consumer welfare. Otherwise, we would essentially be asking companies to refrain from offering services that benefit their users in order to make competing products comparatively more attractive. This is antithetical to the nature of competition, which is based on the principle that what is good for consumers is frequently bad for competitors.
AGCM’s Theory of Harm Rests on Four Weak Pillars
Building on the logic that Amazon enjoys “hyper-dominance” in marketplace intermediation; that most online sales are marketplace sales; and that most marketplace sales are, in turn, Amazon.it sales, the AGCM decision finds that succeeding on Amazon.it is indispensable for any online retailer in Italy. This argument hinges largely on whether online and offline retailers are thought of as distinct relevant markets—i.e., whether, from the perspective of the retailer, online and offline sales channels are substitutable (see also the relevant market definition section above).
Ultimately, the AGCM finds that they are not, as online sales enjoy such advantages as lower fixed costs, increased sale flexibility, and better geographical reach. To an outsider, the distinction between the two markets may seem artificial—and it largely is—but such theoretical market segmentation is the bread-and-butter of antitrust analysis. Still, even by EU competition law standards, the relevant market definitions on which the AGCM relies to conclude that selling on Amazon is indispensable appear excessively narrow.
This market distinction also serves to set up the AGCM’s second, more controversial argument: that the benefits extended to products sold through the FBA channel are also indispensable for retailers’ success on the Amazon.it marketplace. Here, the AGCM seeks a middle ground between competitive advantage and indispensability, finally settling on the notion that a sufficiently large competitive advantage itself translates into indispensability.
But how big is too big? The facts that 40-45% of Amazon’s third-party retailers do not use FBA (p. 57 of the decision) and that roughly 40 of the top 100 products sold on Amazon.it are not fulfilled through Amazon’s logistics service (p. 58) would appear to suggest that FBA is more of a convenience than an obligation. At the least, it does not appear that the advantage conferred is so big as to amount to indispensability. This may be because sellers that choose not to use Amazon’s logistics service (including offline, of course) can and do cut prices to compete with FBA-sold products. If anything, this should be counted as a good thing from the perspective of consumer welfare.
Instead, and signaling the decision’s overarching preoccupation with protecting some businesses at the expense of others (and, ultimately, at the expense of consumers), the AGCM has expanded the already bloated notion of a self-preferencing offense to conclude that expecting sellers to compete on pricing parameters would unfairly slash profit margins for non-FBA sellers.
The third pillar of the AGCM’s theory of harm is the claim that the benefits conferred on products sold through FBA are not awarded based on any objective quality criteria, but purely on whether the seller has chosen FBA or third-party logistics. Thus, even if a logistics operator were, in principle, capable of offering a service as efficient as FBA’s, it would not qualify for the same benefits.
But this is a disingenuous line of reasoning. One legitimate reason why Amazon could choose to confer exclusive advantages on products fulfilled by its own logistics operation is because no other service is, in fact, routinely as reliable. This does not necessarily mean that FBA is always superior to the alternatives, but rather that it makes sense for Amazon to adopt this presumption a general rule based on past experience, without spending the resources to constantly evaluate it. In other words, granting exclusive benefits is based on quality criteria, just on a prior measurement of quality rather than an ongoing assessment. This is presumably what a customer-obsessed business that does not want to take chances with consumer satisfaction would do.
Fourth, the AGCM posits that Prime and FBA constitute two separate products that have been artificially tied by Amazon, thereby unfairly excluding third-party logistics operators. Co-opting Amazon’s own terminology, the AGCM claims that the company has created a flywheel of artificial interdependence, wherein Prime benefits increase the number of Prime users, which drives demand for Prime products, which creates demand for Prime-eligible FBA products, and so on.
To support its case, the AGCM repeatedly adduces a 2015 letter in which Jeff Bezos told shareholders that Amazon Marketplace and Prime are “happily and deeply intertwined,” and that FBA is the “glue” that links them together. Instead of taking this for what it likely is—i.e., a case of legitimate, efficiency-enhancing vertical integration—the AGCM has preferred to read into it a case of illicit tying, an established offense under Article 102 TFEU whereby a dominant firm makes the purchase of one product conditional on the purchase of another, unrelated one.
The problem with this narrative is that it is perfectly plausible that Prime and FBA are, in fact, meant to be one product that is more than the sum of its parts. For one, the inventory of sellers who use FBA is stowed in fulfillment centers, meaning that Amazon takes care of all logistics, customer service, and product returns. As Bezos put it in the same 2015 letter, this is a huge efficiency gain. It thus makes sense to nudge consumers towards products that use FBA.
In sum, the AGCM’s case rests on a series of questionable assumptions that build on each other: a narrow relevant market definition; a finding of “hyper-dominance” that downplays competitors’ growth and expansion, as well as competition from outside the narrowly defined market; a contrived notion of indispensability at two levels (Marketplace and FBA); and a refusal to contemplate the possibility that Amazon integrates its marketplace and logistics services in orders to enhance efficiency, rather than to exclude competitors.
Remedies
The AGCM sees “only one way to restore a level-playing field in e-commerce logistics”: Amazon must redesign its existing Self-Fulfilled Prime (SFP) program in such a way as to grant all logistics operators—FBA or non-FBA—equal treatment on Amazon.it, based on a set of objective, transparent, standard, uniform, and non-discriminatory criteria. Any logistics operator that demonstrates the ability to fulfill such criteria must be awarded SFP status and the accompanying Prime badge, along with all the perks associated with it. Further, SFP- and FBA-sold products must be subject to the same monitoring mechanism with regard to the observance of Prime standards, as well as to the same evaluation standards.
In sum, Amazon Italy now has a duty to treat Marketplace sales fulfilled by third-party operators the same as those fulfilled by its own logistics service. This is a significant step toward “common carrier antitrust.” in which vertically integrated firms are expected to comply with perfect neutrality obligations with respect to customers, suppliers, and competitors.
Beyond the philosophical question of whether successful private companies should be obliged by law to treat competitors analogously to its affiliates (they shouldn’t), the pitfalls of this approach are plain to see. Nearly all consumer-facing services use choice architectures as a means to highlight products that rank favorably in terms of price and quality, and ensuring consumers enjoy a seamless user experience: Supermarkets offer house brands that signal a product has certain desirable features; operating system developers pre-install certain applications to streamline users’ “out of the box “experience; app stores curate the apps that users will view; search engines use specialized boxes that anticipate the motives underlying users’ search queries, etc. Suppressing these practices through heavy-handed neutrality mandates is liable to harm consumers.
Second, monitoring third-party logistics operators’ compliance with the requisite standards is going to come at a cost for Amazon (and, presumably, its customers)—a cost likely much higher than that of monitoring its own operations—while awarding the Prime badge liberally may deteriorate the consumer experience on Amazon Marketplace.
Thus, one way for Amazon to comply with AGCM’s remedies while also minimizing monitoring costs is simply to dilute or even remove the criteria for Prime, thereby allowing sellers using any logistics provider to be eligible for Prime. While this would presumably insulate Amazon from any future claims against exclusionary self-preferencing, it would almost certainly also harm consumer welfare.
A final point worth noting is that vertical integration may well be subsidizing Amazon’s own first-party products. In other words, even if FBA is not fully better than other logistics operators, the revenue that it derives from FBA enables Amazon to offer low prices, as well as a range of other benefits from Prime, such as, e.g., free video. Take that source of revenue away, and those subsidized prices go up and the benefits disappear. This is another reason why it may be legitimate to consider FBA and Prime as a single product.
Of course, this argument is moot if all one cares about is how Amazon’s vertical integration affects competitors, not consumers. But consumers care about the whole package. The rationale at play in the AGCM decision ultimately ends up imposing a narrow, boring business model on all sellers, precluding them from offering interesting consumer benefits to bolster their overall product.
Conclusion
Some have openly applauded AGCM’s use of EU competition law to protect traditional logistics operators like FedEx, Poste Italiane, DHL, and UPS. Others lament the competition authority’s apparent abandonment of the consumer welfare standard in favor of a renewed interest in punishing efficiency to favor laggard competitors under the guise of safekeeping “competition.” Both sides ultimately agree on one thing, however: Amazon Italy is about favoring Amazon’s competitors. If competition authorities insist on continuing down this populist rabbit hole, the best they can hope for is a series of Pyrrhic victories against the businesses that are most bent on customer satisfaction, i.e., the successful ones.
Some may intuitively think that this is fair; that Amazon is just too big and that it strangles small competitors. But Amazon’s “small” competitors are hardly the “worthy men” of Brandeisian mythology. They are FedEx, DHL, UPS, and the state-backed goliath Poste Italiane; they are undeniably successful companies like eBay, Alibaba – or Walmart in the United States. It is, conversely, the smallest retailers and consumers who benefit the most from Amazon’s integrated logistics and marketplace services, as the company’s meteoric rise in popularity in Italy since 2016 attests. But it seems that, in the brave new world of antitrust, such stakeholders are now too small to matter.
The Autorità Garante della Concorenza e del Mercato (AGCM), Italy’s competition and consumer-protection watchdog, on Nov. 25 handed down fines against Google and Apple of €10 million each—the maximum penalty contemplated by the law—for alleged unfair commercial practices. Ultimately, the twodecisions stand as textbook examples of why regulators should, wherever possible, strongly defer to consumer preferences, rather than substitute their own.
The Alleged Infringements
The AGCM has made two practically identical cases built around two interrelated claims. The first claim is that the companies have not properly informed users that the data they consent to share will be used for commercial purposes. The second is that, by making users opt out if they don’t want to consent to data sharing, the companies unduly restrict users’ freedom of choice and constrain them to accept terms they would not have otherwise accepted.
According to the AGCM, Apple and Google’s behavior infringes Articles 20, 21, 22, 24 and 25 of the Italian Consumer Code. The first three provisions prohibit misleading business practices, and are typically applied to conduct such as lying, fraud, the sale of unsafe products, or the omission or otherwise deliberate misrepresentation of facts in ways that would deceive the average user. The conduct caught by the first claim would allegedly fall into this category.
The last two provisions, by contrast, refer to aggressive business practices such as coercion, blackmail, verbal threats, and even physical harassment capable of “limiting the freedom of choice of users.” The conduct described in the second claim would fall here.
The First Claim
The AGCM’s first claim does not dispute that the companies informed users about the commercial use of their data. Instead, the authority argues that the companies are not sufficiently transparent in how they inform users.
Let’s start with Google. Upon creating a Google ID, users can click to view the “Privacy and Terms” disclosure, which details the types of data that Google processes and the reasons that it does so. As Figure 1 below demonstrates, the company explains that it processes data: “to publish personalized ads, based on your account settings, on Google services as well as on other partner sites and apps” (translation of the Italian text highlighted in the first red rectangle). Below, under the “data combination” heading, the user is further informed that: “in accordance with the settings of your account, we show you personalized ads based on the information gathered from your combined activity on Google and YouTube” (the section in the second red rectangle).
Figure 1: ACGM Google decision, p. 7
After creating a Google ID, a pop-up once again reminds the user that “this Google account is configured to include the personalization function, which provides tips and personalized ads based on the information saved on your account. [And that] you can select ‘other options’ to change the personalization settings as well as the information saved in your account.”
The AGCM sees two problems with this. First, the user must click on “Privacy and Terms” to be told what Google does with their data and why. Viewing this information is not simply an unavoidable step in the registration process. Second, the AGCM finds it unacceptable that the commercial use of data is listed together with other, non-commercial uses, such as improved quality, security, etc. (the other items listed in Figure 1). The allegation is that this leads to confusion and makes it less likely that users will notice the commercial aspects of data usage.
A similar argument is made in the Apple decision, where the AGCM similarly contends that users are not properly informed that their data may be used for commercial purposes. As shown in Figure 2, upon creating an Apple ID, users are asked to consent to receive “communications” (notifications, tips, and updates on Apple products, services, and software) and “Apps, music, TV, and other” (latest releases, exclusive content, special offers, tips on apps, music, films, TV programs, books, podcasts, Apple Pay and others).
Figure 2: AGCM Apple decision, p. 8
If users click on “see how your data is managed”—located just above the “Continue” button, as shown in Figure 2—they are taken to another page, where they are given more detailed information about what data Apple collects and how it is used. Apple discloses that it may employ user data to send communications and marketing e-mails about new products and services. Categories are clearly delineated and users are reminded that, if they wish to change their marketing email preferences, they can do so by going to appleid.apple.com. The word “data” is used 40 times and the taxonomy of the kind of data gathered by Apple is truly comprehensive. See for yourself.
The App Store, Apple Book Store, and iTunes Store have similar clickable options (“see how your data is managed”) that lead to pages with detailed information about how Apple uses data. This includes unambiguous references to so-called “commercial use” (e.g., “Apple uses information on your purchases, downloads, and other activities to send you tailored ads and notifications relative to Apple marketing campaigns.”)
But these disclosures failed to convince the AGCM that users are sufficiently aware that their data may be used for commercial purposes. The two reasons cited in the opinion mirror those in the Google decision. First, the authority claims that the design of the “see how your data is managed” option does not “induce the user to click on it” (see the marked area in Figure 2). Further, it notes that accessing the “Apple ID Privacy” page requires a “voluntary and eventual [i.e., hypothetical]” action by the user. According to the AGCM, this leads to a situation in which “the average user” is not “directly and intuitively” aware of the magnitude of data used for commercial purposes, and is instead led to believe that data is shared to improve the functionality of the Apple product and the Apple ecosystem.
The Second Claim
The AGCM’s second claim contends that the opt-out mechanism used by both Apple and Google “limits and conditions” users’ freedom of choice by nudging them toward the companies’ preferred option—i.e., granting the widest possible consent to process data for commercial use.
In Google’s case, the AGCM first notes that, when creating a Google ID, a user must take an additional discretionary step before they can opt out of data sharing. This refers to mechanism in which a user must click the words “OTHER OPTIONS,” in bright blue capitalized font, as shown in Figure 3 below (first blue rectangle, upper right corner).
Figure 3: AGCM Google decision, p. 22
The AGCM’s complaint here is that it is insufficient to grant users merely the possibility of opting out, as Google does. Rather, the authority contends, users must be explicitly asked whether they wish to share their data. As in the first claim, the AGCM holds that questions relating to the commercial use of data must be woven in as unavoidable steps in the registration process.
The AGCM also posits that the opt-out mechanism itself (in the lower left corner of Figure 3) “restricts and conditions” users’ freedom of choice by preventing them from “expressly and preventively” manifesting their real preferences. The contention is that, if presented with an opt-in checkbox, users would choose differently—and thus, from the authority’s point of view, choose correctly. Indeed, the AGCM concludes from the fact that the vast majority of users have not opted out from data sharing (80-100%, according to the authority), that the only reasonable conclusion is that “a significant number of subscribers have been induced to make a commercial decision without being aware of it.”
A similar argument is made in the Apple decision. Here, the issue is the supposed difficulty of the opt-out mechanism, which the AGCM describes as “intricate and non-immediate.” If a user wishes to opt out of data sharing, he or she would not only have to “uncheck” the checkboxes displayed in Figure 2, but also do the same in the Apple Store with respect to their preferences for other individual Apple products. This “intricate” process generally involves two to three steps. For instance, to opt out of “personalized tips,” a user must first go to Settings, then select their name, then multimedia files, and then “deactivate personalized tips.”
According to the AGCM, the registration process is set up in such a way that the users’ consent is not informed, free, and specific. It concludes:
The consumer, entangled in this system, of which he is not aware, is conditioned in his choices, undergoing the transfer of his data, which the professional can dispose of for his own promotional purposes.
The AGCM’s decisions fail on three fronts. They are speculative, paternalistic, and subject to the Nirvana Fallacy. They are also underpinned by an extremely uncharitable conception of what the “average user” knows and understands.
Epistemic Modesty Under Uncertainty
The AGCM makes far-reaching and speculative assumptions about user behavior based on incomplete knowledge. For instance, both Google and Apple’s registration processes make clear that they gather users’ data for advertising purposes—which, especially in the relevant context, cannot be interpreted by a user as anything but “commercial” (even under the AGCM’s pessimistic assumptions about the “average user.”) It’s true that the disclosure requires the user to click “see how your data is managed” (Apple) or “Privacy and Terms” (Google). But it’s not at all clear that this is less transparent than, say, the obligatory scroll-text that most users will ignore before blindly clicking to accept.
For example, in registering for a Blizzard account (a gaming service), users are forced to read the company’s lengthy terms and conditions, with information on the “commercial use” of data buried somewhere in a seven-page document of legalese. Does it really follow from this that Blizzard users are better informed about the commercial use of their data? I don’t think so.
Rather than the obligatory scroll-text, the AGCM may have in mind some sort of pop-up screen. But would this mean that companies should also include separate, obligatory pop-ups for every other relevant aspect of their terms and conditions? This would presumably take us back to square one, as the AGCM’s complaint was that Google amalgamated commercial and non-commercial uses of data under the same title. Perhaps the pop-up for the commercial use of data would have to be made more conspicuous. This would presumably require a normative hierarchy of the companies’ terms and conditions, listed in order of relevance for users. That would raise other thorny questions. For instance, should information about the commercial use of data be more prominently displayed than information about safety and security?
A reasonable alternative—especially under conditions of uncertainty—would be to leave Google and Apple alone to determine the best way to inform consumers, because nobody reads the terms and conditions anyway, no matter how they are presented. Moreover, the AGCM offers no evidence to support its contention that companies’ opt-out mechanisms lead more users to share their data than would freely choose to do so.
Whose Preferences?
The AGCM also replaces revealed user preferences with its own view of what those preferences should be. For instance, the AGCM doesn’t explain why opting to share data for commercial purposes would be, in principle, a bad thing. There are a number of plausible and legitimate explanations for why a user would opt for more generous data-sharing arrangements: they may believe that data sharing will improve their experience; may wish to receive tailored ads rather than generic ones; or may simply value a company’s product and see data sharing as a fair exchange. None of these explanations—or, indeed, any others—are ever contemplated in the AGCM decision.
Assuming that opt-outs, facultative terms and conditions screens, and two-to-three-step procedures to change one’s preferences truncate users’ “freedom of choice” is paternalistic and divorced from the reality of the average person, and the average Italian.
Ideal or Illegal?
At the heart of the AGCM decisions is the notion that it is proper to punish market actors wherever the real doesn’t match a regulator’s vision of the ideal—commonly known as “the Nirvana fallacy.” When the AGCM claims that Apple and Google do not properly disclose the commercial use of user data, or that the offered opt-out mechanism is opaque or manipulative, the question is: compared to what? There will always be theoretically “better” ways of granting users the choice to opt out of sharing their data. The test should not be whether a company falls short of some ideal imagined practice, but whether the existing mechanism actually deceives users.
There is nothing in the AGCM’s decisions to suggest that it does. Depending on how precipitously one lowers the bar for what the “average user” would understand, just about any intervention might be justified, in principle. But to justify the AGCM’s intervention in this case requires stretching the plausible ignorance of the average user to its absolute theoretical limits.
Conclusion
Even if a court were to buy the AGCM’s impossibly low view of the “average user” and grant the first claim—which would be unfortunate, but plausible — not even the most liberal reading of Articles 24 and 25 can support the view that “overly complex, non-immediate” opt-outs, as interpreted by the AGCM, limit users’ freedom of choice in any way comparable to the type of conduct described in those provisions (coercion, blackmail, verbal threats, etc.)
The AGCM decisions are shot through with unsubstantiated assumptions about users’ habits and preferences, and risk imposing undue burdens not only on the companies, but on users themselves. With some luck, they will be stricken down by a sensible judge. In the meantime, however, the trend of regulatory paternalism and over-enforcement continues. Much like in the United States, where the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has occasionally engaged in product-design decisions that substitute the commission’s own preferences for those of consumers, regulators around the world continue to think they know better than consumers about what’s in their best interests.
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