Let’s not have regulatory overlaps on data compliance

livemint.com:

Data protection is a cross-cutting legal regime. Since it applies to every entity that collects and processes personal data, its principles tend to superimpose themselves on top of other legislative frameworks—increasingly so, as more and more businesses go digital. The unavoidable outcome of all of this is that traditional regulators are beginning to engage with data protection issues in ways that they previously never had cause to.

This, as one might imagine, has blurred the boundaries between regulators and forced regulated entities to reorganize their internal processes in order to deal with the multiple and often conflicting demands from different regulators. One of the main areas of conflict is competition regulation. The value of a technology platform rises the more the people using it.

Social media platforms increase in popularity as more subscribers sign up, just as ride-sharing and e-commerce platforms are more attractive to buyers and sellers alike the more options they offer both. This is the power of network effects in a platform economy. The inevitable outcome of all of this is that one (at best two) dominant companies end up being in control of a given market.

When that happens, users begin to worry that their options are limited, and that they have no choice but to accept services on the terms made available by a major platform. Competition authorities have begun to dig deeper into these situations, trying to ascertain whether there are any competition concerns on account of the data advantage that Big Tech companies enjoy. These investigations inevitably stray beyond the traditional bounds of competition regulation, into areas that have so far remained within the sole purview of the data regulator.