Discrimination in Online Platforms

This book focuses on the legal governance of online platforms concerning direct and indirect discrimination against users in the housing, advertising, and labor markets.
Through an extensive investigation of sources that include private company practices, antidiscrimination policies, collective and private litigation, court decisions, and public regulation, this book illustrates how statutory law and legal precedents in the E.U. and the U.S. are only partially equipped to address discrimination against statutorily protected classes in online platforms.

In the analysis of the selected sources, the author showcases that the main obstacles to the full implementation of the equality principle rely on online platforms’ structural challenges, including their aesthetic designs, matching tools, evaluation systems, and network effects that ultimately reinforce old biases against protected classes. In light of these structural challenges, the author concludes that the fight against discrimination in online platforms may produce the best results when oriented by a model of regulation that encourages private businesses to implement the principle of transparency, fairness and the active cooperation of antidiscrimination bodies.

Ana Maria Corrêa is a legal scholar attached to CiTiP/Katholiek Universiteit (KU) Leuven. She holds a PhD from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). She is member of the Berkeley Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law Group, the Internet Society Association, KU Leuven Digital Society Institute and the Perelman Centre. Prior to joining CiTiP, Ana lectured at the ULB in the Comparative Law Course (2017 and 2020-2021) & at Goethe Universitat Frankfurt in the Global Law Theories course (2016). She coordinated the Equality Law Clinic at the ULB (2016-2017).

Digital version available on :

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• Strada lex Luxemburg
• Strada lex Europa

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