The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service proposed adding social networks and search engines to the fifth antimonopoly package, according to the letter of the Deputy Director of the Service of Sergei Puzyrevsky to the Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Economic Development.
Last year, the government made a draft change in the law “On Protection of Competition”, which will regulate the work of marketplaces and aggregators, and in November the first reading in the State Duma of Russia was held.
The project, which proposes to expand regulation for digital platforms, such as social networks and search engines that have more than 100 thousand users daily audience, follows from a letter from the Federal Antimonopoly Service of November 16, 2022. This bill is necessary to “exclude a discriminatory approach to regulating digital platforms”.
The authorities and market participants continue to discuss changes in the bill from the fifth antimonopoly package. The Minzifra did not support the initiative due to the “untimely regulation of” search engines and social networks, the source of the publication “Vedomosti” said, which took part in the discussion of changes.
Regulation will apply to all major online platforms that affect competition, said Ilya Torosov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development. The government decided to create a working group involving a business and officials that will analyze the market to determine the need to include non -jealous platforms in regulation, Ilya added.
The project should be ready until February 17, 2023, said the representative of the Department of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko. He also stated that the regulation of social networks is not part of the current version of the bill. In September 2020, the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia proposed banning abuse by large Internet markets and introducing the concept of a “network effect”, which means the influence of one platform on market conditions for specific goods and the possibility of excluding competitors from the market. These recommendations formed the basis of the fifth antimonopoly package.
Regulation on digital platforms, such as social networks and search engines that have a daily audience of more than 100,000 users, will be expanded, according to the bill, which was adopted on the first reading. To achieve this goal, a separate bill will be created, which will be prepared by the FAS, the Central Bank of Russia and other departments until April 20, 2023. The project determines that the share of transactions between third -party sellers and buyers on the platforms should be no more than 35% of the total market and the revenue should not exceed 2 billion rubles.