Social media platforms play a central role in the new digital landscape and have recently gained a huge political importance, as shown by the famous case of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

One of the main challenges raised by these players is represented by the issue of data management : who is entitled to own the data produced by users during the time they spend on these platforms? How can privacy protection be effectively enforced? Is big data just a matter of consumer protection or competition too? How to concretely develop mechanisms of interoperabilty with the aim of fostering competition in markets which seem characterized by a natural tendency towardsmonopoly ?

The European regulators tried to answer this and other questions by adopting the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR ), however more work seems to be needed to effectively cope with the growth of these tech giants.