The present blog symposium is meant to collect and bring to a wider audience the output of the Collective Redress and Digital Fairness Conference, which we organised on 10–11 December 2025 with the support of the Stichting Onderzoek Collectieve Actie and the Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law. The Conference aimed to analyse and discuss the rising and ongoing evolution of collective redress—understood broadly as the availability of collective avenues for the enforcement and protection of collective and even societal interests—in cases involving alleged violations of digital rights, especially, though not exclusively, by large technology companies, a phenomenon that sits at the intersection of several fields and interests, both in academia and legal practice.
Indeed, we believe that this phenomenon deserves our attention because of its remarkable complexity and the many analytical lenses through which it can be approached.
We now have a substantial digital acquis, from the GDPR to the DSA, the DMA, and the emerging frameworks around AI and product liability. Alongside this regulatory shift, collective redress has moved from the margins to a central enforcement mechanism in several EU Member States. But its growing prominence does not mean its effectiveness is guaranteed. Questions remain about how well representative actions function, whether they actually lower barriers to justice for affected groups, and to what extent they meaningfully contribute to the protection of digital rights rather than adding procedural and substantive complexities. A key question this blog symposium aims to address, is: What is the role of private law and litigation in shaping digital fairness, and how does it constrain or contribute to collective redress mechanisms?
We sought to bring together a diversity of perspectives and expertise. During the conference, we engaged in a lively conversation, based on the inputs of two brilliant keynote speakers, eleven selected speakers, three chairs, and three discussants, as well as an engaged audience. Our conversation unfolded along three thematic panels.
Panel 1 examined the role and place of collective redress. It looked at the structural foundations and challenges of collective litigation, the democratic implications of shifting systemic digital harms into representative actions, and the increasing use of strategic litigation in data protection and content moderation. Panel 2 focused specifically on groups and representation. Here, the attention moved to who is protected, by whom, and with what instruments. Topics included the collective online protection of minors under the DSA, the treatment of vulnerable individuals across EU digital regulation, and the interplay between the GDPR, the RAD, and the AI Act when addressing algorithmic harms. Panel 3 turned to remedies and redress, asking what outcomes are realistically achievable. Presentations addressed which harms can be collectively compensated, and how collective settlements concretely shape redress across different jurisdictions. The panel also considered the extent to which current procedures can represent diffuse user groups affected by DMA-related infringements.
Starting today and continuing over the next two weeks, the Transformative Private Law Blog will roll out shorter and easy-to-read versions of many of the presentations given during the conference.
The first piece, published together with this introductory note, is Ignacio Cofone’s keynote, “Privacy Harm and Digital Harms in Collective Redress: Toward a Framework for GDPR Damages”. Building on the arguments made in his latest book, The Privacy Fallacy, Cofone takes the reader through the complex characteristics of harms in the digital environment and presents an innovative interpretation of the notions of “material” and “immaterial harms” under Article 82 GDPR, one that would be able to channel the dignitary and personal dimension of many violations while also enabling systems of proof and quantification that could properly work in collective actions.
Group AI inferences and vulnerability is at the centre of Liubomir Nikiforov’s piece, “EU Collective Redress Gap”. The author discusses how the ex-ante categorisation of actors linked to specific categories, which emerges from the overlap of substantive digital regulation and the procedural avenues set out in the RAD, fails to capture the complex definition of subjects addressed by harmful data-based practices, where the very identification of the group of targeted individuals comes not from pre-existing taxonomies, but rather from the creation of patterns, links, and relevant features by algorithms themselves.
Then, a piece will follow by Marco Giacalone and Carlotta Manz, “Equitable Digital Justice & Vulnerable Individuals”. They explore several findings of the DIKE project on the impact of the digitalisation of justice on vulnerable individuals, highlighting how a proper and inclusive form of digitalisation becomes essential to ensure effective collective redress without leaving behind those who need it most.
Next, Valentina Golunova’s “The Transatlantic Platform Accountability Movement” will better position the role of private enforcement, and of collective actions by civil society organisations in particular, in the difficult geopolitical context where legislators (especially in the USA, but also in the EU with the Omnibus package) are offering a listening ear to platforms’ powers and interests towards deregulation, and public enforcement risks further losing its already precarious bite.
The theme of the political relevance of collective action and its potential role as public interest litigation is further addressed by Axel Halfmeier, whose “The Democratic Value of Collective Litigation” will engage with the ever-present debate on the role of judge-made law and the democratic deficit that it (allegedly!) suffers, prompting the reader to view the topic through innovative lenses.
Marina Federico will help us link these topics to real-life scenarios—such as the many cases now litigated for the protection of minors—by exploring, in her blog post “The Collective Online Protection of Minors in the DSA”, the interpretative avenues that better ensure recognition and redress for the peculiar harms suffered by minors in the digital economy, and the avenues for collective redress capable of bringing these entitlements into action.
The Symposium will continue with three pieces bringing once again the concept of litigation to the fore.
First, a blog post from Karl Wörle and Oskar Gstrein, “Collective Settlements in the Digital Space”, in which they explore the role of collective settlements in the legal framework regulating collective redress, comparing different jurisdictions and discussing the need for judicially supervised settlement.
Second, a blog post from Swee Leng Harris, “Financing Digital Rights Litigation against Big Tech”, where she presents the findings of her empirical research on the role of funding from philanthropic associations as an enabler of public interest litigation, as well as learning points on how the latter could be better structured to meet the needs of civil society organisations.
Third, a blog post by Joanna Moreira and Lena Hornkohl (Ius Omnibus), “Collective Redress in the Digital Age”, which shows how an essential tool of incredible potential might suffer from a lack of harmonisation and ineffective regulatory choices on several issues, from participation modalities to the accessibility of third-party litigation financing.
The Symposium will come to an end with the piece “Towards Collective Redress for Data Harms under the GDPR”, co-authored by Francesca Episcopo, Anna van Duin and Aart Jonkers. Building on some of the insights from Cofone’s theory of harms, it discusses the intrinsically collective nature of data harms caused by systemic business model violations and consider the necessity of a collective avenue for their recognition as a tool for effective judicial protection (not just deterrence). It also points out how the current legal framework, both under Articles 82 and 80 GDPR, can be interpreted as fully enabling the types of compensatory remedies and opt-out participation needed to properly support mass claims.
We sincerely hope that the readers will enjoy reading these contributions. To conclude, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Stichting Onderzoek Collectieve Actie for their generous financial support in making the Conference possible, and to the Transformative Private Law Blog for hosting this symposium and providing a platform for continued reflection and debate. Our warmest thanks go to all the authors who so generously agreed to contribute their work to this series, the reviewers of the blog posts, as well as to the speakers, chairs, discussants, and participants whose engagement made the original conversation so rich. We hope that this Symposium will continue that dialogue and contribute, in its own way, to the ongoing development of collective redress and digital fairness in Europe and beyond.
(Photo: Max Harlynking)