The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is primarily an antitrust regulation targeting large "gatekeeper" platforms, but it has significant implications for data privacy. By restricting how dominant platforms can leverage user data, the DMA complements the GDPR's privacy protections from a competition law perspective.

What the DMA Does

The DMA identifies large platforms as gatekeepers based on their market influence and user base. These gatekeepers face specific obligations designed to promote fair competition, including restrictions on combining personal data across services without consent, requirements to allow users to uninstall pre-installed apps, and prohibitions on self-preferencing in search results and app stores.

Privacy Implications

Several DMA provisions directly affect how gatekeepers handle personal data. Platforms cannot combine data from their core service with data from other services or third-party sources without explicit user consent. This limits the comprehensive user profiling that dominant platforms have relied on for targeted advertising.

The DMA also requires gatekeepers to allow third-party interoperability in messaging services, which raises data protection questions about how personal data flows between services with different privacy standards.

The DMA operates alongside the GDPR rather than replacing it. While the GDPR focuses on protecting individual privacy rights, the DMA addresses the market power that enables privacy-invasive practices at scale. Together, the regulations create a more comprehensive framework that tackles both the privacy violations themselves and the market dynamics that make them possible.

Impact on the Digital Advertising Ecosystem

By restricting data combination and cross-service tracking, the DMA challenges the surveillance-based business models of dominant platforms. This could accelerate the shift toward privacy-respecting advertising and analytics approaches that do not depend on comprehensive user profiling.