Dr Andrea Coscelli, head of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), is recruiting teams of high-powered mathematicians and psychologists to crack the mysterious algorithms they deploy to drive internet traffic. Plans for a code of conduct for tech companies to ensure content producers are properly rewarded were first suggested last year in a report for the Treasury by Jason Furman, President Obama’s former chief economist. Google, for instance, can tweak its search algorithms at will to reduce traffic to websites it doesn’t favour. And he added that their ‘large user base’ was a ‘source of market power, leading to weak competition in search and social media’. He called for a special ‘Digital Markets Unit’ to be established, with the ability to enforce a code of conduct on the internet giants to ensure that they ‘do not engage in exploitative or exclusionary practices’.

Source: Daily Mail October 10, 2020 22:51 UTC