Ex ante regulation of digital platforms: Challenges for the three criteria test

Amid calls for regulation of digital platforms can the Three Criteria Test be used to indetify where ex ante regulation is relevant?

Do digital platforms like Facebook and Google play such a large part in our lives that they should be regulated like utilities? An article in The Economist recently identified such regulation as big tech’s biggest long term threat . Would such regulation be justified or is it a political and emotional response to fear that such large organisations are taking over our lives? This edition of Hexagon considers the challenges to the “three criteria test”, used to identify electronic communications markets susceptible to ex ante regulation, if it were applied to digital platforms.