The rise of the sharing economy has generated great regulatory challenges. The European Union (EU) has to perform a fine balancing act. On the one hand, it has to safeguard weaker parties, consumers and workers, ensuring they enjoy fair treatment by adopting proper regulatory responses. On the...

This article puts forth the concept of protocol power as the disproportionate influence of dominant platform actors to shape and set industry-wide standards, and thus determine certain rules of inclusion at the technical, existential level of protocol. In this way, protocol power shapes and...