Delegitimising Data Subjects’ Economic Interests During Automatic Propertisation of Their Data: A Comparative Study of Data Protection on Social Media Platforms in the UK and China

Social media platforms (SMPs) generate revenue from the automatic propertisation of data contributed by users (i.e. they process these data algorithmically to feed products and services they sell to other customers, especially advertisers). This comparative study of the UK and China builds on key law and policy documents as well as in-depth interviews with 25 experts. We find that neither the human rights–based regulatory approach in the UK nor the impact-based approach of China provides users with economically meaningful forms of redress for harm suffered due to insufficient protection of their rights as data subjects. The study reveals the reasons for this: (1) by analysing data subjects’ rights in data protection law and establishing whether these rights preserve the economic interests of data subjects pertaining to their data; (2) by spelling out the conditions under which users can exercise their rights and (3) through an in-depth analysis of the existing mechanisms, which are not suitable to protect data subjects’ economic interests during automatic propertisation. This also helps us to understand the social impacts of China’s recently approved Personal Information Protection Law. Finally, it suggests two possible ways to improve the balance between the economic interests of data controllers and data subjects.