Designing Effective and Accessible Consumer Protections against Unfair Treatment in Markets where Automated Decision Making is used to Determine Access to Essential Services: A Case Study in Australia's Housing Market Linda Przhedetsky Faculty of Law, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW, Australia linda.przhedetsky@student.uts.edu.au Abstract The use of data-driven Automated Decision Making (ADM) to determine access to products or services in competitive markets can enhance or limit access to equality and fair treatment. In cases where essential services such housing, energy and telecommunications, are accessed through a competitive market, consumers who are denied access to one or more of these services may not be able to access a suitable alternative if there are none available to match their needs, budget, and unique circumstances. Being denied access to an essential service such as electricity or housing can be an issue of life or death. Competitive essential services markets therefore illuminate the ways that using ADM to determine access to products or services, if not balanced by appropriate consumer protections, can cause significant harm. My research explores existing and emerging consumer protections that are effective in preventing consumers being harmed by ADM-facilitated decisions in essential services markets. ACM Reference format: Linda Przhedetsky. 2021 Designing Effective and Accessible Consumer Protections against Unfair Treatment in Markets where Automated Decision Making is used to Determine Access to Essential Services: A Case Study in Australia's Housing Market. In Proceedings of the 2021 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES ‘21), May 19-21, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461702.3462468 Research Problem The impacts of ADM upon equality and fairness are often hard to identify because ADM involves using complex algorithmic processes to analyse personal data to make a decision about a person’s access to a product or service. These processes are often opaque, hidden within an algorithmic ‘black box’ that consumers can rarely challenge (Edwards & Veale, 2017). The Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author AIES '21, May 19–21, 2021, Virtual Event, USA © 2021 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8473-5/21/05. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461702.3462468 use of ADM in these contexts therefore creates a major power imbalance between consumers and businesses and necessitates an examination of the suitability of existing consumer protections. In many competitive markets if a consumer is prevented from accessing a product or service that suits their needs and preferences, it is presumed that they will be able to shop around until they are able to find an alternative (Kwarteng et al., 2020). In cases where essential services such housing, energy and telecommunications are accessed through a competitive market, consumers who are denied access to one or more of these services may not be able to access a suitable alternative if there are none available to match their needs, budget, and unique circumstances. Being denied access to an essential service such as electricity or housing can be an issue of life or death. Competitive essential services markets therefore illuminate the ways that using ADM to determine access to products or services – if not balanced by appropriate consumer protections – can cause significant harm. Concerningly, these harms disproportionately impact people experiencing vulnerability who already face many barriers to accessing essential services such as housing, energy (Davidson, Saunders, Bradbury and Wong, 2018) and healthcare (ACOSS and Brotherhood of St Laurence, 2018). ADM can exacerbate or eliminate these barriers when it is used to determine who is able to access certain products and services, at what cost, and under which terms and conditions. Using housing as a case study for an essential services market, I explore whether current regulatory solutions are effective (successful in achieving their stated aims) and accessible (providing consumers with access to justice) in protecting consumers from experiencing unfair treatment. Where necessary and appropriate, I propose alternative regulatory interventions to improve upon existing consumer protections. I explore my research problem through the following questions: Q1 What are the real and potential harms caused by the use of ADM in determining access to essential services in competitive markets? Q2 How do consumer protections apply in contexts where ADM is used to facilitate access to essential services in competitive markets? Student Track Abstract AIES ’21, May 19–21, 2021, Virtual Event, USA 279