Net Neutrality matters: Privacy antibodies for information monopolies and mass profiling | Neutralidade da rede importa: anticorpos de privacidade para monopólios de informação e profiling em massa

Abstract

Profiling activities used to personalise user content can place online corporations in a position of significant influence over user behaviour. The ability to deliver different search engine results, news feeds, discriminatory prices, and so forth, can be exploited to grant unequal access to different kinds of content. This is likely to intensify with the Internet of Things (IoT), which will surround individuals with sensors capable of 24/7 full tracking. This content-shaping power jeopardises the neutral accessibility that a democratic internet should ensure. Indeed, both neutrality and accessibility should refer not only to the service connection but also to the content it delivers. This study examines this personalisation and filtering power in light of Privacy and Data Protection regulations to explore how privacy principles can be used to enhance IoT accessibility. It elaborates a comparative analysis of legislative sources related to public goods and interests, data flows and contract law relationships, into a holistic narrative reasoning. The discussion addresses the monopolistic economic position of platforms, their connected revenue models and the power to control and influence information. Fake news plays a crucial role in this and is addressed consequently. Therefore, the study analyses how these factors together could form profiling ‘multi-monopolies’ in connection with a non-neutral Internet of Things. Furthermore, techniques of influence have more grip where there is a lack of awareness and knowledge, and a new model of digital “divide et impera” seems to enhance these phenomena. Besides, social score systems and discriminatory pricing can be powerful tools in this sense. We discuss the gap between regulatory approaches and real-world situations, offering common legal tools and Privacy by Design (PbD) as potential solutions for neutral accessibility. We highlight how the current regulatory framework requires more harmonisation to guarantee effective user protections, especially in an IoT ecosystem.