The EU legal framework for algorithmic recommender systems: I (don’t) know it when I see it

Abstract

ABSTRACT E-commerce providers increasingly rely on recommender systems to curate online consumption. EU law requirements for such recommender systems were initially introduced in privacy legislation, but recent years have seen several new provisions on this topic in consumer protection legislation and platform regulation. However, the latter regulations are limited to online intermediaries and, just like privacy legislation, they merely require businesses that use recommender systems to provide transparency on this to consumers. Transparency is not a solution for the challenges that recommender systems pose because it is difficult to achieve (especially towards consumers) and is not enough to allow users to control recommendations. Furthermore, most of these tools rely on private enforcement, which has proved to be less than effective.