Description
Although the Internet is fundamental to our lives, we do not always think about the kind of economic transaction we are involved in every time we consume it. While we are all aware of who pays for the service we receive when we go to a restaurant or a public library, this is not so clear when we are on Google, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Tinder, Grindr, Snapchat, LinkedIn, or YouTube. We pay for the restaurant, our taxes pay for the public library, but who pays for the web giants we interact with every day? Although we use the internet far more often than we go to restaurants or libraries, only a minority of us can give a comprehensive answer to this simple question. The answer, in essence, is this. Economic actors operating in the digital sector collect data about us: some of this data is used to improve products and services, while other is processed to obtain predictive algorithms, i.e. algorithms capable of predicting people's behaviour. By extracting behavioural data and profiling individuals, it is possible to target consumers with the right stimulus at the right time to induce behaviour that will benefit the platform and advertisers. A critical factor in the functioning of this industry is the use of behavioural psychology techniques to induce users to 1) devote as much time and attention as possible to the content proposed by the platforms; 2) provide data about themselves; 3) purchase the goods or services proposed by the advertisers; 4) behave online and offline, either by action or omission, in accordance with the behaviour desired by the advertisers or the platform.In this paper, using the influence of Pokémon GO on its players as a paradigm, I would like to analyse the nature of this power of influence from the perspective of Kelsen's theory of imputation. I will consider the following problem: if A intentionally induces B to ϕ, B ϕs and believes that her ϕing is an act performed as a result of a free choice, A does not use force or lies to induce B to ϕ, but merely creates an environment that makes it highly likely that B will ϕ, should the responsibility for ϕing be legally imputed to A or B?
| Period | 23 Jun 2023 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Roundtable on Law and Popular Culture |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Maastricht, NetherlandsShow on map |