Designing Fairness: Power, Manipulation and Responsibility Online
Workshop
Living Room
Wednesday 20.05 — 14:15 - 15:30
Organising Institution
EDRi
Belgium
As the EU debates the Digital Fairness Act in a broader climate of ‘simplification’, a fundamental question emerges: should digital markets rely primarily on informed choice, or should law address the architecture of influence itself?
Digital services increasingly operate as optimisation systems that shape behaviour in real time. Traditional regulatory approaches have focused on disclosure, consent and case-by-case enforcement. This interactive workshop invites participants to test an alternative perspective: what changes when responsibility shifts from individual vigilance to design accountability?
Through small-group exercises, participants will redesign concrete digital scenarios under two regulatory logics and compare their implications for autonomy, equality and data protection. The objective is to collectively examine how different understandings of fairness redistribute responsibility between individuals, traders and regulators, and what this means for the future of the Digital Fairness Act.